Facebook is censoring a growing number of posts at the request of authorities in Hong Kong, who have also pursued overseas internet service providers over content deemed in breach of the city's security legislation.
Despite a city-wide crackdown on public dissent and political opposition in recent years, Hong Kong has so far remained outside of the Great Firewall of Chinese internet censorship.
But there are signs that the city’s internet isn’t as free as it once was.
Restrictions on Facebook content have skyrocketed from 402 instances in 2019, a year before the first security law was passed, to 2,181 instances in 2023, according to publicly available information published by Facebook's parent company Meta, and viewed by RFA Cantonese on Oct. 9.
Most restrictions targeted personal Facebook accounts, pages and groups, although some involved restricting individual posts and comments on posts, the data showed.
Meta said in a response to RFA Cantonese that it "responds to government data requests in accordance with applicable laws and our terms of service."
It said every request is "carefully reviewed for legal adequacy," while any request that appeared "too broad or vague" would be carefully scrutinized.
It also stated that "every request we receive will be carefully reviewed for legal adequacy, and any request that appears to be too broad or vague will be reviewed carefully." request, we may deny or request more specific details."
The owner of the EduLancet account on Facebook, Yeung Wing Yu, said Facebook had blocked users in Hong Kong from viewing a Sept. 1 post he wrote about the widely criticized police response to July 21, 2019, attacks on passengers and passers-by in Yuen Long MTR station.
"We've received a legal request from the Office of the Privacy Commissioner for Personal Data, to restrict access to your post for going against local law," Facebook told Yeung in a notice he posted to his Instagram account. "We complied with the request after conducting a legal and human rights assessment."
"Your content can still be seen by people in other locations," the notice said.
However, the URL to the post provided by Yeung returned an error message when viewed from the United Kingdom on Oct. 14.
Yuen Long attacks
The Yuen Long police attacks came at the height of the 2019 protests against plans to allow the extradition of alleged criminal suspects to mainland China, that later broadened to include demands for fully democratic elections and greater official accountability.
According to a book about the democracy movement published in September 2023, Hong Kong police knew in advance that white-clad mobsters planned to attack protesters and passers-by at the Yuen Long train station on July 21, 2019.
When dozens of unidentified thugs in white T-shirts attacked train passengers and passers-by with wooden and metal poles that day, police were inundated with emergency calls, but didn't move in until 39 minutes after the attacks began, drawing widespread public criticism that has largely been quashed or ignored by the city authorities.
Yeung's post had identified one officer involved in the incident.
The authorities have also pursued overseas internet service providers over content published by Hong Kongers overseas, Radio Free Asia has learned.
Overseas activist Sunny Cheung, who edits the online protest magazine " Be Water," said the magazine's internet service provider had received a letter from Hong Kong's national security police, who implement the 2020 National Security Law and the 2024 Law to Safeguard National Security, last month.
U.S.-based Cheung, who is among more than a dozen overseas activists wanted by the Hong Kong authorities, said police had claimed that "Be Water" was in violation of the National Security Law, which applies to anyone, anywhere in the world, and called on the provider to block it.
"This whole thing is about the Hong Kong government trying to exercise extraterritorial power to order network service providers in the United States to implement Hong Kong's National Security Law," Cheung told RFA Cantonese in a recent interview.
"The letter didn't mention any evidence, but accused us of crimes including 'secession' and 'incitement'."
Cheung described the measures as "extreme" and "ridiculous."
"Our U.S. service providers had the guts to stand up to the Hong Kong government and reject this request," he said.
The Facebook and Instagram pages of "Be Water" were still displaying normally in Hong Kong on Oct. 9.
However, some pro-democracy websites were blocked in the city, including the website of the U.S.-base Hong Kong Democracy Council, the London-based rights website Hong Kong Watch and an online museum commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen massacre.
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.