Facebook restricts users in Lithuania for mentioning war in Ukraine

This was reported by the LRT broadcaster.

It is noted that Facebook users in Lithuania began to be massively restricted for expressing support for Ukraine. 

The Committee on National Security and Defense of the Lithuanian Seimas conducted an investigation, where its observations were shared by the specialized organization debunk.org, which analyzed the reasons for blocking. According to its leader Viktoras Daukšas, the reason for the restriction is the words "Moscovia", “Moskal”, "Putin's zombies", "Russian killers", "catsaps", and "orcs". There are also cases of blocking of fundraising pages in support of Ukraine. Daukšas emphasized that about 120 messages were received with information about blocked profiles.

"The post of Remigijus Šimašius, the mayor of Vilnius, was blocked and restricted for one day simply because he published an educational post explaining that "Maskolija" is a historical term. And it is absolutely correct, but the algorithms took it as prohibited content and blocked it,” he said.

In some cases, blocked users did not use any trigger words. For example, a pro-Russian user wrote a comment that "the whole of Lithuania is sitting in this shit", and they blocked for 30 days the person who replied "Then get out of here, why are you staying here". Another was blocked for the phrase "great nation of great barbarians." One of the users received a 30-day ban for a picture of a Ukrainian woman hitting a Russian soldier with a bouquet. It is practically impossible to appeal any account restrictions. 

The most striking case in Lithuania was the lifelong blocking of the "Praeitis zalakas" page with 200,000 subscribers, where they talked about Russian aggression and organized meetings in support of Ukraine. According to the expert, one of the factors of the problem may be the incorrect automatic translation from Lithuanian to English, which significantly distorts the content in the original language.

It is known that on December 16, Deputy Minister of Communications Agnė Vaiciukevičiūtė met with representatives of the department of the company Meta, which is responsible for the segment of the social network in the Baltics and Poland, and expressed concern about the fact that users are often punished for expressing support for Ukraine. It is planned that representatives of Meta will come to Vilnius in January 2023.

• On April 4, social networks Facebook and Instagram restricted the use of hashtags related to the war crimes of the Russian military in the Kyiv region #Bucha and #BuchaMassacre. From the screenshots of the blocking messages, it can be concluded that the hashtags were blocked because someone regularly complained about them.

• In July, Ukraine's Ministry of Digital Transformation appealed to Meta and urged the corporation to improve the quality of moderation, not to block Ukrainian bloggers and not to hide content.

• On August 9, Instagram blocked the page of the Azovstal Defenders' Families Association, which had 33,000 followers. The association said it has filed an appeal against the decision. Ukraine's Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov also commented on this situation. He emphasized that the pages of Ukrainian defenders should not be blocked. On August 10, Instagram unblocked the page. 

• On September 9, due to the policy of the Meta company, which manages Facebook and Instagram, the pages of the Azov Patronage Service - Angels of Azov were blocked in these social networks.