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Facebook Shuts Russian Propaganda Network ‘Based in Romania’

Posted on September 3, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook’s security department has shut down several accounts belonging to a publication that presents itself as an independent global news organisation primarily based in Romania, “for violating our policy against foreign interference”.

The accounts were operated by people associated with the Russian government who used fake accounts and spread anti-Western propaganda.

Their use of environmental concerns and pacifist arguments to discredit Western democratic institutions has been described as reminiscent of the tactics used by the Soviet Union during the Cold War, which funded front organisations in Western countries to influence public opinion against democratic governments.

“Although the people behind this activity attempted to conceal their identity and coordination, our investigation found links to individuals associated with past activity by the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA),” the social network said in its August security report.

The network, which gravitated around the news website Peacedata.net, targeted audiences from “on the left of the political spectrum”.

It posted global news and comment on current events “relevant to left-leaning communities”, including social and racial justice issues in the US and UK, NATO and EU politics, alleging Western war crimes, corruption and environmental issues.

One of the articles shared by Peacedata charged the British government with creating “a myth of a migrant crisis to distract from its failures”.

Another article published on Facebook by the same network accused France of following neo-colonial practices in its former African colonies. The third example given by Facebook officials of content distributed in the disabled accounts had the title: “Boogaloo Movement: USA Far Right is Growing Thanks to Donald Trump”.

Another item published by Peacedata.net called the Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya “a Western regime change puppet”.

The network consisted of 13 accounts and two Facebook pages with a following of 14,000. According to the social network, it was in the “early stage” of building a wider audience.

It produced content in English and Arabic and “focused primarily on the US, UK, Algeria and Egypt, in addition to other English-speaking countries and countries in the Middle East and North Africa.”

They also “recruited unwitting freelance journalists to write on particular topics”.

Peacedata.net website is still on air and has rejected Facebook’s accusation that it is a tool of the Kremlin in a lengthy statement that calls The New York Times and The Washington Post “brainwashing machines”. It also called Facebook’s CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg an “adversary of freedom and democracy” who “proudly walks alongside such monstrous figures as Donald Trump”.

Facebook Pulls Pro-Trump Network Operating From Romania

Posted on August 7, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Facebook on Thursday announced it had removed dozens of accounts on Facebook and Instagram operated by people in Romania who claimed to be American supporters of US President Donald Trump, Reuters reported. A few Trump fan pages also created in Romania were shut down as well.

“We removed 35 Facebook accounts, 3 Pages and 88 Instagram accounts,” reads the report in which Facebook informed of the removal of the Romanian-based accounts.

“The people behind this network used fake accounts – some of which had already been detected and disabled by our automated systems – to pose as Americans, amplify and comment on their own content, and manage Pages including some posing as President Trump fan Pages,” the document concluded.

Besides hiding their real locations, some of the cancelled accounts presented “coordinated inauthentic behaviour” that violated the platforms’ rules, Facebook said. Some of the accounts were run by the same persons, using multiple fake identities, for example.

The accounts promoted stories backing Trump’s re-election in November and stressing the support he was allegedly receiving from conservatives, black Americans, Christians and followers of the so-called QAnon conspiracy theory, Reuters said.

QAnon conspiracy followers believe Trump is waging a secret war against an elite of Satan-worshipping paedophiles operating in government, business and the media.

Facebook security policy head Nathaniel Gleicher said the company hadn’t determined yet if the Romanian group was motivated by money, ideology or a government directive.

“This activity originated in Romania and focused on the US. We found this network as part of our investigation into suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior ahead of the 2020 election in the US,” the company added.

The reach of the scrapped accounts seems to have been small, as they were followed by no more than a few thousand other accounts.

Facebook Tightens Rules on Political Ads in Montenegro

Posted on August 6, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

Advertisers who want to run ads about social issues, elections or politics in Montenegro on Facebook will face new tightened, restrictive rules from Thursday, ahead of August 30 parliamentary elections and in line with Facebook’s new transparency regulations, promoted last year.

Advertisers will now have to complete a new authorizations process. It applies to anyone who wants to create or edit ads targeting Montenegro and that reference political figures, political parties or elections.

The social media giant explained that such ads will now also be marked “Paid for by…” as a disclaimer, showing who paid for the specific political ad. To get authorization for such promotions, Facebook will ask for government-issued ID and two official documents.

“We’ll also use it to help detect and prevent risks such as impersonation or ID theft, which helps to keep you and our community safe. It won’t be shared on your profile, in ads or with other admins of your Pages or ad accounts,” Facebook said on its official page.

“We require that the advertiser provide additional information, like a local business address, local phone number, email and website, if they choose to use their organization or Page name in the disclaimer. These requirements hold advertisers accountable for the ads they run on Facebook and Instagram,” the social media giant wrote on its Facebook for Business website.

Political parties in Montenegro have often used social media in ways that are far from transparent during elections and without proper insight about the money spent and audience targeted.

In March, Facebook added Montenegro and some other Balkan countries to the list of regions that will be subject to new political transparency rules.

Enforcement of the new regulations was announced for mid-March, about a month before scheduled parliamentary elections in Serbia and North Macedonia. In the event, both the elections and implementation of the new regulations were postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

North Macedonia: Facebook Pages Target Users with ‘Identical Content’

Posted on June 25, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, DFRLab, which works to counter disinformation online, says its researchers have found dozens of Facebook pages linked to at least 10 Macedonian news outlets, demonstrating “several characteristics pointing to coordinated activity, including the near simultaneous publication of identical content”.

While some of these Facebook “assets” acknowledged their connection to the outlets whose content they were amplifying, others had no known connection.

“The assets also demonstrated signs of inauthenticity, as they were created as various interest pages, but ultimately promoted content from news sites to which they disclosed no connection,” DFRLab said.

It added this was clearly an efficient strategy, as the pages in every network had more followers than the official Facebook pages of the promoted media outlets.

A total of four separate networks or subsets of coordinated Facebook assets were amplifying content published by some of these websites: Republika Online, Kurir, Denesen, News24, Puls 24, Galama Club, among others.

Only one of these is a tabloid. The others publish mostly political content: one of the outlets is openly pro-opposition. The others offer more balanced reporting on internal affairs.

DFRLab research found coordination within networks of pages, but not across the four networks. There was also no sign that North Macedonian media outlets themselves managed the inauthentic networks.

The Facebook pages were created between 2009 and 2018 and were mostly managed from North Macedonia. Some were managed from the US.

According to DFRLab’s research, some of the Facebook pages seemed connected to Adinamic Media, which publishes news sites supporting the main opposition VMRO-DPMNE party.

This media company is believed to have links with the Hungarian pro-government public TV network, Magyar Televizio, MTV.

Researchers said the presence and success of these networks had added to the political polarization in North Macedonia ahead of early parliamentary elections due this year.

“The use of an inauthentic network on social media may enable political forces to mislead people and spread manipulated content to garner voter support, raising a concern on the integrity of the electoral process in the country,” DFRLab said.

VMRO-DPMNE, Putin and right-Wingers

Different pages amplified the same content at the same time from the same media outlets. Red boxes highlight posts from official Facebook pages of Vistina and Republika showing simultaneous posting by official and amplifier pages. Photo: Courtesy of DFRLab

According to the research, the first network consisted of seven Facebook pages that were amplifying articles published by Republika Online, Kurir, Denesen and Vistina.

Vistina is a tabloid and doesn’t cover political topics. The remaining three mainly report on political issues and feature pro-VMRO-DPMNE views. All are owned by the same media holding, Adinamic Media, which is connected to Hungary’s MTV, the report said.

According to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a former senior executive at MTV, Agnes Adamik, established Adinamic Media in 2017. The company then purchased a majority of shares in three media companies in the country, mostly supporting VMRO-DPMNE.

According to some experts, these acquisitions helped Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, expand his and his country’s influence in the Balkans. They also supported his then ally in Macedonia, Nikola Gruevski, who obtained asylum in Hungary after fleeing a prison sentence in his home country in 2018.

The Facebook pages in this network posted almost identical articles and at the same frequency. The total number of followers of the seven pages was more than 690,000, while the official Facebook pages had less than 300,000 followers.

“This may indicate that since these outlets had not been successful in growing audiences for their official Facebook pages, they decided to create coordinated networks to amplify their content,” the researchers say.

The second network comprised 17 Facebook pages publishing content from three news outlets: Markukle, News24 and Signal. These also report political issues, but their content is not openly anti-government.

Some publish supportive articles on Russian President Vladimir Putin, portraying him as an influential leader who upholds traditional values and helps friends in need. News24 sometimes amplified Russia Today and Sputnik videos.

As for the third network of pages, the DFRLab researchers found that the “amplifier pages … may be connected to Filip Petrovski, a right-wing presidential candidate in the 2019 North Macedonia presidential elections and a former member of VMRO-DPMNE party”.

Petrovski opposed the country’s change of name to North Macedonia and has called for the cancellation of the related Prespa agreement with Greece, signed in 2018. Petrovski also posts News24 articles on his own Facebook account.

Two pages in this network had names related to Petrovski, and their “about” sections contained details from his biography and political views.

The fourth network of Facebook assets amplified content published by two outlets, Net Medical Diet, which reports on health, and Galama. According to the research, the eight amplifier pages were managed from North Macedonia and from the US.

DFRLab also found five Facebook pages amplifying content from outlets owned by EM media, in which Adinamic Media has a majority of shares.

“Although the DFRLab was not able to identify coordination between them, there is a likelihood that EM Media was using these assets for content promotion,” the report said.

Facebook-Partnered Croatian Fact-Checkers Face “Huge Amount of Hatred”

Posted on May 27, 2020January 26, 2023 by Ivana Jeremic

A leading Croatian fact-checking site, which has partnered with Facebook to weed out misinformation on the platform, says it is facing “a huge amount of hatred” for the work it does, work that the site says has increased dramatically since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Croatian politicians, websites and users of social media have all taken aim at Faktograf in recent months, accusing it of censorship.

A member of the International Fact-Checking Network, IFCN, since 2017 and the only Croatian media specialised in verifying the accuracy of claims made in public, Faktograf says anti-vaccination groups are particularly sensitive to the debunking of fake news.

Since the onset of COVID-19, “The amount of misinforming content circulating on the internet has drastically increased as people spend more time on the internet, looking for answers to questions that bother them and trying to understand the sudden changes they see in the world around them,” said Faktograf editor-in-chief Petar Vidov.

“It’s mentally stressful to watch all day long how many people spread such misinformation, how fast such things are spreading, and then after all that, you get… a huge amount of hatred, threats, directed against Faktograf because of the work we do.”

“More or less, it is going well, but the problem is that there is that certain number of people you will never reach because they are simply grounded in their own beliefs for a long time, they reject argumented dialogue,” Vidov told BIRN in an interview.

So-called ‘anti-vaxxers’ perceive the debunking of fake news “as a threat to their agenda,” he said.

Falsely accused of ‘spying’ and deleting content

Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/LUONG THAI LINH.

Founded in 2015 by the Croatian Journalists’ Association and democracy advocates GONG, Faktograf last year became one of more than 20 organisations in 14 European Union countries partnering with Facebook in reviewing and rating the accuracy of articles posted on the social networking giant.

Social media users, online platforms and websites in Croatia say Faktograf is effectively censoring their opinions, a claim Vidov said was the result of a “misunderstanding of Facebook’s partnership with independent fact-checkers.”

“We do our job, we are debunking those inaccurate claims that spread in the public space and therefore we have our editorial policy, we determine what we will do,” he told BIRN.

“We prioritise things that endanger human health and that reach a large number of people.”

“Under the terms of that partnership, after we check some content and mark it as inaccurate, partially inaccurate or misinforming in some other way, for example through a fake headline, Facebook should reduce the reach of such content.”

Vidov stressed, however, that Faktograf had nothing to do with Facebook’s own removal of a wave of inaccurate content since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus at the start of the year.

“Faktograf has nothing to do with these removals, we are not working to remove that content, nor do we know which content is being removed.”

“However, people have developed this assumption that it is Faktograf that spies on their profiles and deletes their content from it.” Such assumptions are fuelling “unfounded” hostility towards Faktograf, he said.

Anti-vaxxers promoting conspiracy theories

A graffiti in Croatia’s capital that reads “Stop 5G”. Photo: BIRN.

That has not stopped the likes of 34-year-old Croatian MP Ivan Pernar, who opposes vaccination, from taking to Facebook and YouTube on April 26 to criticise Faktograf, saying the site “determines what is true and censors those who think differently.”

In May, there were a number of small protests in Croatia calling for the suspension of all measures taken by the government to tackle the spread of COVID-19, to halt “violations of free speech” and a halt to the installation of a 5G wireless network “until it is proven not harmful.”

5G has become the focus of a widely-shared conspiracy theory linking the technology to the spread of the coronavirus. Faktograf has written extensively about the conspiracy theory and on Sunday, when another small protest was held in Zagreb against 5G one of those present held a banner describing those working for the site as “mercenaries.”

“At the very beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of information about fake drugs [for coronavirus], theories about how you can test yourself for coronavirus and so on – misinformation that spread primarily out of ignorance, out of the people’s need to get some orientation in all this,” Vidov said.

“But very quickly, conspiracy theories have taken over the story.”

“What we now mostly see is misinformation directed against vaccines,” he said, describing the anti-vaxxer movement in Croatia and the Balkan region as “quite strong”.

“They took over the narrative about the virus and managed to form it in the direction of a big conspiracy of global elites who want to chip the entire population to be controlled, and will do so through a vaccine against coronavirus.”

Fact-checkers playing catch-up

Illustration. Photo: EPA-EFE/HARISH TYAGI.

Vidov, who previously worked at online news site Index.hr, said those who spread misinformation are usually motivated by money.

“People simply make money from it because they generate traffic which they then monetize through advertising services like Google Ad Sense and the like,” he said. They themselves are rarely the originators of such narratives, but simply pick them up “most often from propagandists trying to achieve something.”

“The problem is that this misinformation, no matter how it is created… enters the system in which there are a large number of people who want to make money on this type of content and then they expand it and actually increase the reach of that damage, of that propaganda.”

Those who end up believing the misinformation are not “actors” but “victims” in the process, he said.

“Our education systems have not educated people well enough to be consumers and readers of media content, which is why we have a problem with the fact that unfortunately, a large number of people are not able to spot the difference between a credible and a non-credible source of information”.

The low level of public trust in domestic as well as international bodies is another major factor, Vidov argued.

Fact-checkers, he said, have a tough task in front of them.

“It is frustrating that it takes a lot more time to debunk inaccurate information than it takes to place any misinformation, no matter how stupid and unconvincing it may be.”

Hungarian Police Accused of Abusing Powers to Arrest Critics

Posted on May 13, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Police in Hungary on Wednesday at 6am detained an opposition politician, János Csóka-Szűcs, in Gyula, a small town in Békés County, the media outlet Magyar Narancs reported.

Csóka-Szűcs is the local leader of an opposition movement called the Kossuth Circle and a supporting member of the Momentum party.

Police raided his home and seized his mobile phone and computer, and he was detained and interrogated at the local police station.

Csóka-Szűcs was told that he was being questioned because of a Facebook post from April 20 that he published in a local group “Uncensored chatroom of Gyula,” which was suspected of fear-mongering.

He may face charges under a recent amendment to the criminal law that introduced punishments of one to five years in jail for spreading “falsehoods” or “distorted truth” deemed to obstruct the efforts to combat the pandemic.

This amendment was the part of the controversial Coronavirus Bill, which critics said gave almost “dictatorial” powers to the Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán.

In response to the arrest, the opposition Democratic Coalition said it was organising an “online demonstration”.

Katalin Cseh, an MEP from the Momentum movement, asked people on Twitter https://twitter.com/katka_cseh/status/1260528932392259587 to share the story of Csóka-Szűcs. She accused the police of abusing the law to detain critics of the Orbán-led government.

On April 20, when anti-government demonstrations were held in Budapest, and in the town of Gyula, Csóka-Szűcs shared a call for the demonstration, adding that “1,170 beds were emptied in Gyula as well” to deal with the pandemic.

His post referred to the country-wide anti-pandemic measure during which 60 per cent of all hospital beds were freed up to deal with COVID-19 patients.

In fact, in the local hospital, about 1,200 beds had been duly freed up. But, with this sentence, Csóka-Szűcs had allegedly “obstructed efforts to combat the pandemic”.

Csóka-Szűcs spent four hours in detention at the police station and had to walk home; police did not take him home despite the fact that he is disabled.

This was the second arrest in Hungary for fear-mongering in two days. On Tuesday, a 64-year-old man was detained by police near Szerencs in Borsod county.

He was questioned over a Facebook post he published on 28 April in which he had criticized the government’s anti-pandemic measures, claiming it had deliberately lifted the curfew restrictions at the peak of the pandemic to cause mass infections. He also addressed “Our dear dictator, our dear leader”, saying: “You are a cruel tyrant, but remember, all dictators have failed so far.”

The man, called András, talked later to 444 media outlet about his interrogation.

According to a statement on 5 May, police in Hungary had initiated 83 proceedings on suspicion of fear-mongering and 26 on suspicion of threatening public danger since the pandemic started.

For more information on the state of digital rights and violation amid the pandemic, check BIRN’s digital rights monitoring database.

Facebook Takes Axe to Pages Showing ‘Inauthentic Behaviour’

Posted on May 6, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook’s April 2020 Coordinated Inauthentic Behaviour Report, published on May 5, said a total of eight networks of accounts, Pages and Groups were removed in the last month for violating the social media giant’s policy against foreign and domestic interference.

The report said that these influence operations were “coordinated efforts to manipulate public debate for a strategic goal where fake accounts are central to the operation”.

The media giant said it was working to stop coordinated inauthentic behaviour in the context of domestic and non-state campaigns as well as behaviours acting on behalf of a foreign or government actor.

Two of the removed networks, originating from Russia and Iran, were focused on international issues and were trying to interfere in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary and Serbia, the report said.

As for Russia, Facebook removed 46 Pages, 91 Facebook accounts, 2 Groups, and 1 Instagram account “for violating the policy against foreign interference which is coordinated inauthentic behaviour on behalf of a foreign entity”.

It said this activity originated not only from Russia but from the Donbass region in eastern Ukraine and the Russian-annexed Crimean Peninsula. The people behind it posted in Russian, English, German, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Serbian, Georgian, Indonesian and Farsi, focusing on a wide range of regions around the world.

“The individuals behind this activity relied on a combination of authentic, duplicate and fake accounts – many of which had been previously detected and disabled by our automated systems.

“They used fake accounts to post their content and manage Groups and Pages posing as independent news entities in the regions they targeted,” the report said, adding that the networks posted about geopolitical and local news including topics such as the military conflict in Ukraine, the Syrian civil war, the annexation of Crimea, NATO, US elections, and more recently the coronavirus pandemic.

Facebook’s investigation linked the activity to people in Russia and Donbass as well as to two media organizations in Crimea, NewsFront and SouthFront.

Following the report, SouthFront dismissed the claims that it offered misleading coverage concerning the coronavirus pandemic and said it does not operate from Crimea, calling it all “blatant lies”.

A total of $3,150 was spent for ads on Facebook and Instagram and was paid for primarily in US dollars, Russian rubles, and Euros, the report added.

Facebook also removed 118 Pages, 389 Facebook accounts, 27 Groups, and 6 Instagram accounts originating from Iran.

This activity was focused on a wide range of countries globally, including Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Egypt, Ghana, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, the United States, Britain and Zimbabwe.

These accounts, the report said, “sometimes repurposed Iranian state media content and posted primarily in Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, and English about geopolitical and local news relevant to each region including topics like the civil war in Syria, the Arab Spring protests, the tensions between Libya and Turkey, criticism of Saudi involvement in the Middle East and Africa, Al Qaeda’s actions in Africa, the Occupy movement in the US, criticism of US policies in the Middle East and the 2012 US elections.”

As for the people behind the coordinated activity, the Facebook investigation found links to the state Iranian Broadcasting Corporation.

The remaining six networks of accounts, Pages and Groups that were also taken down were based in the US, Georgia, Myanmar and Mauritania, and were targeting domestic audiences in their home countries.

In total, Facebook removed 732 accounts, 793 Pages, 200 groups and 162 Instagram accounts. The report said they were also sharing misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic.

“All of the networks we took down … in April were created before the COVID-19 pandemic began, however, we’ve seen people behind these campaigns opportunistically use coronavirus-related posts among many other topics to build an audience and drive people to their Pages or off-platform sites.

“The majority of the networks we took down this month were still trying to grow their audience, or had a large portion of engagement on their Pages generated by their own accounts,” the report noted.

Turkish Plan to Muzzle Social Media Delayed by Pandemic

Posted on April 15, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

As Turkey, like the rest of the world, struggles with the coronavirus pandemic, its government plans to take another step to further restrict digital rights in the country.

A draft law will create new responsibilities for answering the government’s demands on their content for social media giants such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and popular messaging apps like WhatsApp and Messenger.

The law on social media was dropped from the parliamentary schedule on Tuesday to make way for more urgent bills on the economy and health amid the COVID-19 pandemic. But civil society groups and opposition parties fear it will be back before long.

Human rights watchdogs, experts and the opposition suspect the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is using the coronavirus crisis to place further controls over social media.

Experts warn that the planned measures would have serious consequences for tech companies’ activities, and may result in some leaving the country.

The draft law on social media has been sent to the business world and unions for consultation, but the opposition is sure it will come back to parliament soon.

“Erdogan’s intention is to close down the social media with this draft law. They will try to bring the draft law [back to parliament] at the first possible chance,” Garo Paylan, an MP from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, HDP, told the media on Tuesday.

A day earlier, the director of the Turkish branch of Human Rights Watch, HRW, Emma Sinclair-Webb, wrote: “Not content with simply cracking down on individuals for critical social media posts, Erdogan’s presidency is now intent on using the COVID-19 crisis as a pretext to exert direct control over social media platforms.”

Emre Kursat Kaya, a security analyst with the Istanbul-based Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies, EDAM, says times of pandemics are usually compared to wartime periods for a reason.

“People are pushed to make a choice between their individual freedoms and more security from public authorities. Most of the time, it is the latter that prevails. Not many questions are asked and debates around issues are mostly avoided as the crisis requires rapid responses,” Kaya told BIRN.

New law creates long list of obligations

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara, Turkey, 2020. Photo: EPA-EFE/STR

The draft law obliges foreign social media companies with high internet traffic to appoint an official representative in Turkey to answer authorities’ demands concerning the content on their platforms.

Companies will need to respond to communications from the authorities about their content within 72 hours and compile and notify officials of all removed or blocked content in three-month periods, the draft law says.

More importantly, the companies will also be asked to store data belonging to Turkish users within the country.

If they fail to respond to official requests within 72 hours, they will face penalties up to 135 million euros. Companies that do not compile the removed or blocked content, or do not store data in Turkey, could be fined up to 675 million euros.

The draft law also says that companies that do not follow the government’s new rules could face having their bandwidth halved after 30 days by a court order, and then reduced by 95 per cent if they continue to flout the rules for another 30 days.

“The Turkish authorities have long demanded to have official representatives of online service providers,” Kaya noted.

“This demand was linked to a wish to accelerate the removal of unlawful content from online platforms. But even without having a representative in Turkey, these platforms tend to respond to removal requests quite rapidly, and faster than the 72 hours expected by the text,” he added.

Kaya said the first two aspects of the proposed law would not have such a big impact on how fast content is deleted, but “will only add another layer of pressure on online service providers by taking their representatives as responsible”.

He added: “What’s more worrying … is the third aspect, which basically requires data localization from online service providers.

“This is highly problematic as there is no precedent of such action from these global companies and this could result in them simply leaving the Turkish market,” he continued.

Companies may quit market rather than obey

Two Turkish women try to get connected to the Twitter in Istanbul, Turkey. Photo: EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU

Taylan Yıldız, a former Google analyst and member of the Istanbul Municipal Council from the opposition Good Party, said that the draft law has many open-ended articles, and it will mostly affect people with pro-opposition ideas and opposition parties.

In March alone, 433 Turkish citizens were detained because for social media posts that allegedly spread fake or manipulative news on the coronavirus pandemic.

At least four people were arrested or fined for their social media posts, including Fikri Saglar, a former lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, CHP.

A legal investigation was also started against Omer Gergerlioglu, an HDP MP, because of his social media posts on the effect of the pandemic on Turkey’s overcrowded prisons.

“Companies are left with only two options. They will stop their operations in Turkey, or they will block every content following the government’s complaints,” Yildiz wrote in his personal blog.

Yildiz said that if social media companies withdraw operations from the country, “Turkey will become introverted and will face a disconnection with the rest of the world”.

Turkey previously blocked several social media companies because of their refusals to delete some content.

Court rulings blocked Twitter several times in 2014, though the ban was later lifted following an agreement between Twitter and the government.

As of 2018, Twitter reported that the Turkish government accounted for more than 52 per cent of all content removal requests worldwide; Twitter only answered 4 per cent of the government’s requests.

Turkey also banned the social information platform Wikipedia for more than two-and-a-half years because of content that the government wanted removed. In a surprise decision, the Constitutional Court lifted the ban on January 15, 2020.

“If the legislation passes as it stands, the main issue for social media providers will be the demand for data localization. This is practically impossible, as it would mean an additional financial burden and unavoidable security risks for these companies,” Kaya, from EDAM, said.

He said the demand for data localization was not unique to Turkey, so if companies concede it to Turkey, they will face pressure to do the same for many other countries. “Sadly, this will probably result in many of them leaving the Turkish market,” he predicted.

The worldwide online payments system PayPal ceased all of its operations in Turkey for similar issues in 2016. “Facebook, Twitter and WhatsApp could follow in PayPal’s footsteps and disable the use their applications in Turkey,” Kaya concluded.

Facebook Extends Political Ads Rules to Balkans Before Elections

Posted on March 7, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Facebook has added Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Moldova and Turkey to its updated list of countries that must adhere to its strict political advertising transparency regulations.

The enforcement of the new regulations is expected in mid-March, about a month before parliamentary elections in Serbia and North Macedonia, due on April 26 and April 12 respectively. Montenegro is also due to hold the elections this year, by October at the latest.

Facebook launched the regulations in June last year. They mean that any adverts paid for by a political group or candidate must be labelled as such.

With the new 32 countries, the total count of states required to stick to the regulations, which relate to any adverts about social issues, elections or politics, rose to 89.

Apart from the five Balkan countries, the regulations will also expand to Chile, Japan, Mexico and Indonesia, to name a few. Facebook said it was working to expand enforcement to more countries later this year, including Myanmar and Brazil.

“Anyone who wants to run ads about elections or politics in these countries will need to confirm their identity with an ID issued from the country they want to run ads in and disclose who is responsible for the ad.

While political ads will be more transparent, the requirements are also designed to ensure that Facebook can list political advertisers in its Ad Library. Political ads from all of these new regions will now be added to the Ad Library API.

“We will introduce the Ad Library Report for each of these countries by the end of April. The report provides aggregated insights for ads about elections and politics, such as total number of ads and spends in the Ad Library. The report is also available as a downloadable file,” Facebook explained.

Political parties in the Balkans have often used social media in ways that are far from transparent during elections.

At the beginning of 2020, SHARE Foundation, a Serbia-based digital rights NGO, asked Facebook to put Serbia and North Macedonia on the list, citing the upcoming elections as the main reason. In its letter, SHARE said that if these two countries were on the list “the campaign will be more transparent.”

“This is especially important, since it is expected that Facebook pages which are not openly political might engage in supporting a certain political party or candidate with ads,” the letter adds.

Montenegro Detains Activist for Predicting ‘War’ on Facebook

Posted on January 29, 2020January 26, 2023 by BIRD

Montenegro’s state prosecution on Tuesday ordered civic activist Vesko Pejak to be put into custody for 72 hours for causing panic and disorder over a Facebook post predicting “war in Montenegro” – and for claiming that officials were provoking citizens who opposed the recently adopted law on religion.

The law has angered the largest faith group in the country, the Serbian Orthodox Church, and tens of thousands of people have been marching twice weekly in the streets in protest against it.

The Serbian Church, SPC, says it is designed to strip it of its property and land, which the government denies. Opposition political movements are also regular participants in the anti-government rallies.

The Center for Investigative Reporting in Montenegro, CIN-CG, said that by arresting people solely for their thoughts, the government threatened freedom of thought and expression, which is one of the cornerstones of democracy.

“We appeal to all actors in the public arena to take the greatest responsibility regard to the situation and not to exacerbate tensions,” the CIN-CG press release said.

“We urge the authorities to release Pejak and to no longer stifle freedom of speech and freedom of movement,” a member of the Alternative movement, Nikola Bezmarevic, told the media.

The main opposition group, the pro-Serbian Democratic Front also condemned the arrest.

The government has been clamping down hard lately on activists spreading “panic” on social media.

On January 24 police detained a well-known pro-Russian journalist, Igor Damjanovic, over his conversation on Facebook with another person who then filed a case against him. Damjanovic claimed the real reason for his detention was not his verbal exchange on Facebook but his long record of anti-NATO activism, which has irked the government.

On January 23 in a separate case concerning Facebook comments, police arrested Milija Goranovic from Niksic for allegedly insulting the country’s police chief, Veselin Veljovic. Media reports said Goranovic was fined 500 euros for telling Veljovic “not to talk rubbish” below a statement of the police director on Facebook.

One day after Goranovic was arrested, the US ambassador to Montenegro, Judy Rising Renke, reminded the government on twitter that freedom of speech was fundamental to democracy. “This really worries me. Public figures are routinely criticized and even insulted – it’s part of the job. I know. However, at the end of the day, we must defend the right to free speech,” she posted.

Two editors of local news websites, IN4S and Borba, Gojko Raicevic and Drazen Zivkovic, were detained on January 12 on suspicion of causing panic and public disorder. This was in connection with reports of an explosion at the Villa Gorica, a building in Podgorica used by the government for receptions. After they published their stories, some regional media republished the alleged information. The police later denied that any explosion had occurred and said that a minor electrical failure had occurred at the villa, which was soon repaired. They said Raicevic and Zivkovic were arrested for publishing information that had alarmed the public without checking the facts.

On January 5, the editor-in-chief of the Fos media website, Andjela Djikanovic was placed in detention for 72 hours for “causing panic and disorder” after claiming in an article that the government might call on security forces in neighbouring Kosovo to help quell Serbian Church supporters’ protests over the new legislation on religion.

The government has defended its tough response, however, saying it is coming under a systemic and organized attack. On January 14, the Culture Ministry said that the country had become the target of an organised “disinformation campaign” since it adopted the new law on religion. Authorities say they are the victims of a coordinated campaign to spread fake news, organised by a number of media outlets in the country and the region that are spreading religious and national hatred and violence.

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