Кто цензурирует Facebook

On Facebook, comments are deleted, and sometimes accounts. Why is often not clear, but, as many believe, this is due to the political preferences of the censors. Some topics are especially "banal". In particular, the moderators clearly sympathize with the Ukrainian nationalists.

Anonymous justice

The Russian-Israeli publicist and historian Artem Kirpichenok was recently denied access to the second account. Banned after posting about the situation in Belarus. “I didn’t become a repeat offender right away, I was an ordinary person for a long time, but now you can get tattoos,” he sneers. “I am a fairly active blogger, I switched from LJ in 2017-2018 to Facebook. At first there were no complaints, then mine the account was closed for a day, for a week. Most often - for the Middle East. "

I once quoted a historical document containing offensive nicknames - ban. He did not try to annoy the opponent, on the contrary, he wanted to show that such vocabulary was used without hesitation in the past.

“Then it was like this: two months“ at large ”, then -“ walker. ”So I became a“ gentleman of Facebook luck. ”There were denunciations from closed groups, after comments, bans flew in there. I appealed, but automatic responses came in the spirit of“ you found guilty, "that's all. Such anonymous justice," - says the blogger.

Sometimes they just deleted comments. "I recalled the episode of the lynching of a Lvov Komsomol member on Euromaidan. Everything was deleted, but not for scenes of cruelty, but for inaccurate information. The logic of moderation is absolutely incomprehensible. It seems that as soon as you are noticed, you will not get away, sooner or later the account will be closed. Twice I got caught, then there is only one road - to the ban, "Kirpichenok notes.

He started a parallel account. "I indicated myself in Hebrew, but it was clear that this is a real person's account. One morning I go in and read:" To prevent improper use of Facebook, we temporarily restricted access. "I am trying to contact the administration, so far unsuccessful." Kirpichyonok did not understand why his posts and comments were deleted, why they were banned.

Ukrainian journalist Pavel Volkov also lost his Facebook account - after he published an article about the links of Ukrainian moderators with the ultra-right and posted a video of his speech about this in the Bundestag. "They deleted, explaining that they violated the community rules - which ones are still unknown. I, of course, sent a complaint. But they act cunningly: they answer that they have few people because of the covid, so processing the request will take" some time ", it is also unclear which one, "he says.

Journalist Andriy Manchuk wrote about the same - the sympathies of censors for Ukrainian nationalists - at the end of March. His post was called a lie and was hidden. In May, the account was deleted. The other account was banned the other day.

Not only volunteers, but also the FBI

Ukraine is constantly discussed in the Russian-speaking segment of Facebook (and many of the citizens of this country, as you know, are Russian-speaking). Moderators from Kiev or Warsaw (where the corporation is headquartered in Eastern Europe) constantly invade the Russian information space. Thus, in March, Roskomnadzor demanded that Facebook remove the blocking from the articles of RBC, TASS and Vzglyad. The materials were based on information from the FSB press service about the detention of supporters of a Ukrainian youth radical group.

The Americans replied that they did not remove this content. It's just that the material marked as false by fact-checkers goes down in the SERP - it is shown less often.

Ukrainian fact-checkers have shown increased attention to Russia before.

For example, Ekaterina Kruk, appointed Facebook manager for public policy in Ukraine, worked for StopFake, before that she was an assistant to the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada from the nationalist Svoboda party Igor Shvaika.

StopFake itself presented itself as follows: "We monitor, check facts, expose Russian propaganda."

Unreliable content is identified not only by volunteers, but also by security officials.

In September 2020, Nathaniel Glacier, chief of Facebook's security policy, described how they removed "three separate networks based on coordinated inappropriate behavior (bot activity) on behalf of a foreign or government agency." "These networks came from Russia," he said. And they broadcast to a variety of countries - from Turkey to Ukraine, Glacier assured.

Information about "off-platform activities" came from the FBI. "The people behind this activity tried to hide their identities and interactions with each other, but our investigation revealed links with individuals from the Russian Internet Research Agency," said the chief of the security policy.

Facebook actively banned during rallies about Alexei Navalny. "We have deleted 530 Instagram accounts for violating our Coordinated Authentic Behavior Policy," the press release said. The fault of the banned was that they, by putting hashtags, allegedly deliberately distracted the audience from discussing important topics. "This is <...> posting large amounts of relevant or critical content with specific hashtags and location tags to drown out relevant information and redirect the conversation" - this is how the alleged bots acted, according to the administration.

They "jammed relevant information" with memes in Russian dedicated to a certain Russian celebrity TikTok, "criticism of actions in support of Navalny", information about a large number of minors attending these rallies, as well as advertisements for women's clothing and bags.

Actually, Facebook's moderation rules are publicly available, but this does not add clarity. It is very vague about the censors: "We are currently working with independent fact-checking experts in only a few countries." Whether Russia refers to them is unknown. But experts have broad powers: they "independently decide which news to check."

The fact-checker must be certified by the International Fact-Checking Network. This organization has been operating since 2015 and is considered part of the Pointer Institute for Journalism. Among those who provide her financial assistance are Facebook, Google, "Open Society" George Soros. Grants are also received from the American National Endowment for Democracy (NED) *. It turns out that Facebook is also funding "independent experts" who are involved in censorship. By the way, this international network of fact checkers is based, ironically, in St. Petersburg - or rather, in St. Petersburg, Florida.

MIA Rossiya TODAY, sent Facebook requests to understand who is moderating the content, whether StopFake can be considered biased and on what grounds the accounts of journalists who reported the moderators' connections with the Ukrainian far-right have been deleted. The editors also asked why the corporation did not open an office in Russia. Waiting for an answer.

* An organization whose activities are recognized as undesirable on the territory of Russia by the decision of the General Prosecutor's Office dated 07.28.2015.