EXPECT fewer status updates from Papua New Guinea. The country’s Information and Communications Technology Authority is planning a month-long Facebook shutdown to conduct research on how the social media platform is being used.

Sam Basil, the communications minister, told local news outlets that the downtime will allow information to be collected to identify the country’s fake users, as well as those who upload “false or misleading” information or pornographic content. His department will also use the month to look into creating a new social network for citizens of Papua New Guinea.

It is not clear why the experiment is focusing on a Facebook shutdown, rather than studying the site up and running. Only around 12 per cent of citizens have access to the internet.

China, Iran and North Korea all have blanket bans on Facebook, and other countries have blocked the platform temporarily, often during protests or in the run-up to elections.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Papua New Guinea Facebook break”