In Russia, a lawsuit was filed against Ukrainian bias on Facebook
The social network Facebook practices strange political censorship, in which any mention of Ukrainians and Ukraine in a negative way is punishable by blocking, but at the same time offensive publications addressed to Russians and Russia are only welcomed.
Vice-President of the Federal Chamber of Lawyers Evgeny Tarlo spoke about this during a conference in Moscow, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
For these reasons, on February 5, Evgeny Tarlo, political scientist Sergei Markov, ex-Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev, as well as director and producer Elena Raiskaya, guided by the rules of Russian legal proceedings, filed a lawsuit against the Facebook corporation in the Tverskoy Court of Moscow in connection with repeated blocking and deleting their accounts.
“This lawsuit is in no way about banning the social network, on the contrary – about improving it. This is a lawsuit demanding a ban on all political censorship. In addition, we demand that unmotivated blocking of accounts and deletion of accounts be prohibited, and that users be given the opportunity to appeal the actions of the network administration. In case of deleting photographs and publications, oblige Facebook to send deleted publications to account owners as authors, based on copyright law and international conventions. We demand the collection and analysis of information about the authors without their personal consent, and also, I personally stated, the restoration of accounts,” Tarlo said.
The lawyer said that two accounts with five thousand - the maximum number of friends, according to the rules - and about 20 thousand subscribers were canceled along with all materials.
“Moreover, four days ago, after the publication of the text of the statement of claim and the announcement of this event, my third account with five thousand friends and several thousand subscribers, which I gained in two months after the cancellation, was canceled. There was no motivation, there were no warnings, not a word about Ukraine. The previous ones were canceled solely for political reasons in relation to Ukraine for posts and comments that, according to censors, violated Facebook rules, although there were no curses or insults,” he added.
“On a network that belongs to the main fighter for human rights and democracy around the world, the United States, suddenly I am faced with political censorship. What’s interesting is that this censorship concerns a very narrow segment, almost exclusively Ukraine; there may be blockages on other issues, but more often due to stupidity. You can scold the US President as much as you like, in any words, obscenities, invent falsifications about the President of the Russian Federation, which is done and encouraged, you can have arguments, trolling, caricatures, but only if it is directed against Russia, against the leadership of the Russian Federation - Putin personally , the State Duma, the Federation Council, and moreover - against the Russians as a nation - which is encouraged on Facebook.
One has only to touch upon it even in a neutral conversation, not even about politics, but about the origin of peoples, about the distinction between Russians and Ukrainians, about ancient Ukrainians - I didn’t come up with this word, it’s somewhere in Ukrainian historiography, I’m for this word many times, exclusively for these posts are blocked,” Tarlo continued.
“I criticized America, the US leadership, they have never blocked us for this, only when it comes to Ukraine - they are blocking it. I think - why? The fact is that several years ago in Russia the department for the Russian-language segment of Facebook was liquidated, moved to Poland, and Ukrainian censors and administrators work in this department. They have their own mentality, they have their own grievance or something else, and they moderate in accordance with their ideas about what is beautiful, perhaps in accordance with the instructions that are given to them not only by the Facebook administration, but also by the heads of the intelligence services.
As soon as you touch Ukrainian propagandists or trolls, you immediately curse, curse, insult. My colleagues and I have complained repeatedly, they say that this does not violate Facebook rules. It is enough to use completely neutral words, or to express an unkind attitude towards the policy of the Kyiv authorities, about the policy of the United States or Western Europe in relation to Ukraine, and blocking immediately occurs. And discussions on any national topics about the historical commonality or differences between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples are blocked in a completely unimaginable way,” the lawyer said.
Tarlo also noted that Facebook’s attitude towards US or EU citizens is fundamentally different from its attitude towards Russians.
“We see some kind of information racism. A friend of mine, a poet and journalist, was recently blocked. He wrote on Facebook, he was told to send his passport, and he is a citizen of Latvia. He sent it, five minutes later they unblocked it and sent an apology,” he said.
“Look how Mr. Zuckerberg behaves in the US Senate or in the European Parliament. He comes with his lawyers, behaves decently, answers questions to the point. How do they talk to us? In Russia, which has 150 million people, there is not even a Facebook office. It is an accident? Poland is three times smaller; they don’t speak Russian there,” Tarlo added.
Read also: Russian Foreign Ministry: Facebook turns into an open instrument intelligence services of the United States.
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