Facebook bans RT's digital content project Redfish for posts marking end of Mussolini's dictatorship and Holocaust Memorial Day - UPDATE: Facebook caves, page restored

RT
Fri, 30 Apr 2021 19:04 UTC

(L)Redfish logo (R) Screenshot Facebook

RT's Redfish, an award-winning Berlin-based digital content project, has had its Facebook page of over 830,000 followers deleted over posts commemorating the Holocaust and the defeat of Italian fascism.

The company's Facebook account was suspended on Friday after a recent post that criticized fascism. Redfish said Facebook deleted the page on the grounds that its posts commemorating the Holocaust and the defeat of Italian fascism violated its community standards.

The post in question featured an upside-down photo of Italy's dictator Benito Mussolini. It was written on April 28, marking the day when Adolf Hitler's Axis ally was executed.

As the latest post by the Redfish account to be taken down in a year, it triggered a full suspension of the page, which had over 830,000 followers. Earlier in January, on Holocaust Memorial Day, Facebook removed a post showing historic photos of survivors of the Auschwitz death camp.

The photos were bizarrely flagged as violating rules on "nudity and sexual activity."

RT reached out to Facebook for comment but, at the time of publication, is yet to receive a reply.

Last year, Facebook slapped Redfish's account with a label warning readers that the company is "funded in whole or in part by the Russian government." It was part of a larger drive by Big Tech to add alarming descriptors to media companies linked to countries that Washington perceives as its rivals.

The platform has made other questionable censorship decisions concerning historic photos. In May 2020, it prevented attempts to post a colorized version of the iconic photo of Soviet soldiers flying a flag over the captured Reichstag building in Germany. Facebook said the image broke "standards on dangerous individuals and organizations," but later blamed a glitch in its algorithm for the blunder.

Facebook has been quite compliant with Washington's demand to counter what is termed state-sponsored misinformation on the network. A few years ago it partnered with the Atlantic Council - a NATO think-tank funded by major Western weapons producers - to identify "emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world". And this year it hired notorious "troll hunter" Ben Nimmo to provide his expertise on the issue.Both sources tend to blame Russia, without evidence, for things like the 2019 leak of NHS documents that suggested plans for partial privatization of the UK's cherished public health service. Nimmo also happens to be on the list of purported operatives of Integrity Initiative, a secret British information warfare operation.

Still, RT's divisions are getting used to facing obstacles. Last month, the company behind RT's video agency Ruptly and RT DE Productions GmbH, which runs the German-language website, received a notice about their accounts being closed by German Commerzbank, something the channel considers a part of a wider campaign to obstruct its work in the European country.

A week ago, YouTube issued a strike against RT's English channel, restricting its ability to launch live broadcasts for seven days. The penalty was given over older videos that had been uploaded weeks and even months ago. The platform said that the clips, which include an interview with a renowned virologist and live broadcasts from rallies against Covid-19 restrictions, violated its policies on "medical misinformation" and "spam, deceptive practices and scams." Similar restrictions were also imposed on RT's German-language channel.

In late March, the RT Arabic channel on YouTube, which is one of the most popular news sources in that language, was blocked entirely over copyright infringement claims by a US-based firm. The platform then said that the ban was "unintentional," with the channel resuming its operations a few hours later.

Comment: Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan threatened to get the platform itself banned from the internet if Redfish isn't reinstated:

Margarita Simonyan has lashed out at Facebook for suspending the page of Redfish, RT's Berlin-based digital content producer. She said she will try to have the social network itself banned if the decision is not reversed.

"It's not quite clear what this 'community' found so insulting. Was it the Mussolini photo, the reference to Holocaust, or the very existence of the Redfish project, which the Western establishment has long been irritated about," RT editor-in-chief Simonyan said in a social media post.

If the page is not back, I promise I will personally be seeking Facebook's suspension.

The strike for the upside-down Mussolini photo, which led to the suspension, isn't the only one that the platform issued to Redfish this year. In January, Facebook took down a post that showed historic images of inmates of the Auschwitz death camp taken after its liberation. Redfish posted them to commemorate International Holocaust Day.

She was joined in her warning by the International Federation of Journalists:

Censorship of political views by a private company like Facebook can undermine media freedom, the head of the International Federation of Journalists warned after the page of RT's digital content project, Redfish, was deleted.

"If pictures of prisoners detained by the Nazis during World War II are removed because they allegedly breach nudity guidelines then Facebook's algorithms are not fit for purpose," Anthony Bellanger, the general secretary of the International Federation of Journalists, told RT. "Journalism is about context," he pointed out.

But, according to Bellanger, the more worrisome scenario is that Redfish could've faced restrictions for "political reasons."

"There are grave concerns that an unaccountable private corporation like Facebook can decide, which political views it allows and which it decides to censor," he said.

That is a dangerous path to go down and can undermine media freedom.

Later on Friday, Russian media regulator Roscomnadzor demanded that Facebook swiftly lift all restrictions on Redfish's account. The actions of the US social media platform "violate key principles of free distribution of information" and constitute "an act of censorship against the Russian media," the watchdog pointed out. Facebook could face fines for ignoring warnings about violations of the rights of Russian citizens and companies online, it warned.

UPDATE 01/05/2021: Redfish has had its account reinstated, but Facebook is still throttling it:

The page of the award-winning Berlin-based project was restored by Facebook on Saturday. The account got deleted by the social media giant on Friday over alleged violations of its "community standards" with several posts that commemorated victims of the Holocaust, as well as celebrated an anniversary of the downfall of the fascist regime in Italy with an upside down photo of Benito Mussolini.

The page, boasting over 800,000 followers, is now available under a new URL address and remains heavily restricted, Redfish said in a statement.

"It is still at risk of being deleted. The posts commemorating victims of the Nazi Holocaust and the defeat of fascism in Italy remain flagged as 'content violations' that threaten the survival of our page," Redfish said. "Our account is also severely restricted, it has been made invisible to Facebook users who do not follow Redfish, and we are banned from inviting people to like the page."

The status of the page has effectively changed from being flatly banned to being "under the risk of being unpublished...due to continued Community Standards violations," the Redfish team told RT. While Facebook promised on Friday that someone would contact the project to address the issues, Redfish still has not heard anything from the social media giant.

The action against Redfish - which previously was labeled by Facebook as "funded in whole or in part by the Russian government" during a big tech campaign against Russian-linked media - has been criticized by the head of the International Federation of Journalists, Anthony Bellanger.