Syria bans Facebook

Popular social networking website Facebook is no longer available to users in Syria, according to the latest reports by Syrian internet users.

The site is first thought to have become unavailable last Friday, with some observers such as women's rights advocate Dania al-Sharif commenting to Reuters that this was due to government fears of the site's ability to allow and host so-called ‘virtual societies'.

However other bloggers and international observers have instead suggested that the real reason for what appears to be the ban of the site, is that it has been subject to a spam e-mail campaign by anti-Syrian activists.

According to Joshua Landis' Syria Comment blog, "A couple of days before the blocking took place (on Nov 15th), a systematic vulgar spam campaign was launched in the Syria Network (with avatars resembling Israeli flags and ridiculing Syrians)".

At the time of writing, there were 28,585 members of Facebook's Syrian network (equating to just 1.9% of the 1,500,000 internet users operating in Syria ). Messages along the lines of those suggested above were clearly visible on Facebook's Syria Network page.