Facebook censors Pravda.Ru

Facebook started to censor Pravda.Ru. 50420.jpeg

In the afternoon of Friday, June 21^st, hyperlinks to Pravda.Ru materials stopped to appear on the Pravda.Ru page on Facebook. We contacted the support team of Facebook, although to no avail: moderators of the Russian division of the US-based social network did not bother answering.

On Sunday afternoon, access to the publication of links was reopened.

We do not understand what it was and why it happened? Political commitment of the head of the Moscow branch of the social network could serve as an explanation for this behavior of moderators of the Russian team of Facebook.

Pravda.Ru previously addressed to Katya Skorobogatova in connection with advertising on Facebook against then Prime Minister of the Russian government, Vladimir Putin. We also addressed to her in connection with the hacking of the account of Inna Novikova, the editor-in-chief of Pravda.Ru. Neither Skorobogatova nor anyone else from her team considered it necessary to answer us.

We can understand the political views of the regional top manager. It is not clear, though, why Skorobogatova expands her political views to her work? At the same time, as it became clear from the hacked correspondence of blogger Alexei Navalny, Skorobogatova was persistently offering her services to the blogger's wife to promote him on Facebook.

One of the top bloggers of Facebook Russia, Vyacheslav Kvirikashvili, noted in connection with the recent situation that occurred to Pravda.Ru that he was going to address to Mark Zuckerberg because "everyone is fed up with voluntarism of Skorobogatova's team." The example of Pravda.Ru is not the only one. "We are not stepchildren," Kvirikashvili wrote.

Pravda.Ru is not going to interfere in internal administrative structures of Facebook. It is none of our business, what kind of people work there. However, as long as it goes about spontaneous censoring of a Russian mass media outlet, we believe it is necessary to note that in this way the American social network violates the laws of both Russia and the United States.

When the U.S. State Department makes another announcement about restrictions of freedom of speech in Russia, let's remember the case of Pravda.Ru on Facebook, when managers of the American social network decided to censor a lawfully published Russian publication.

We wanted to stop cooperating with Facebook completely, but there were many of our subscribers left there, and we must work for them. Pravda.Ru will stay on the social network, although nobody knows until when. After all, the perspective to stay there entirely depends on voluntarism of the team created by, as we believe, the politically biased Katya Skorobogatova.