Papua New Guinea to ban Facebook for a month to study impact on users

Papua New Guinea will ban Facebook for a month to study its impact on the general populace and root out "fake users," a government minister said on Tuesday.

The government plans to conduct research into how the social media platform is being used in the country during the ban, Sam Basil, minister for communications, told the local Post Courier newspaper.

The shutdown would allow the government analysts to study the use of Facebook, including people behind fake accounts, pornographic uploads and posts with false and misleading news and information, he said.

"This will allow genuine people with real identities to use the social network responsibly," Basil said.

"We cannot allow the abuse of Facebook to continue in the country."

Lately, Facebook has come under serious scrutiny by many governments after it was revealed that the platform had leaked personal data of tens of millions of users to a British company, Cambridge Analytica.

Basil has raised privacy concerns in the past.

"The national government, swept along by IT globalization, never really had the chance to ascertain the advantages or disadvantages [of Facebook], and even educate and provide guidance on the use of social networks like Facebook to PNG users," he said last month.

Basil said the department's research would weigh the impact on the general population with or without the Facebook.

"We can also look at the possibility of creating a new social network site for PNG citizens to use with genuine profiles as well," he said.

The exact date for the implementation of the ban has not been announced.