Blocking of Ukrainian bloggers on Facebook and Instagram — the Ministry of Digital has asked Meta to improve the quality of moderation
The Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine officially appealed to the American corporation Meta Platforms with a request to improve the quality of moderation — so that the publications of Ukrainians are no longer hidden, and their accounts are not blocked without reason. This was announced by the Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov.
It’s no secret that the Meta moderation system, which owns the Facebook and Instagram social networks, as well as the WhatsApp messenger, is currently hacked and cannot cope with Russian propaganda and bots — since the beginning of the full-scale war, Ukrainian users have been massively faced with the problem of blocking posts and accounts in social networks. And at present, this problem is particularly acute. The last time we returned to the discussion of this important topic was in May, when Mykhailo Fedorov met with the president of global affairs of Meta, Nick Clegg, and, among other things, discussed the acute blocking of Ukrainian content on Facebook and Instagram – then we were promised that the situation would soon improve, but noticeable changes there is still no moderation in the system.
The Ministry of Digitization said that they are in contact with Meta, which has even set aside a separate team for this purpose in order to quickly respond to requests regarding unjustified blocking of Ukrainian content. Almost all of these requests receive a positive decision — the accounts of activists, volunteers, and bloggers are unblocked (the Ministry of Statistics says that in recent months they helped unblock dozens of pages of public figures), but globally, this does not change anything, the ministry emphasizes.
“We have a brutal war going on, so it is unfair to moderate Ukrainian content according to the rules of peacetime. Social media was created to tell the truth. Millions of Ukrainians have united since the first day of the war and are acting as a single information front. Spread the news on social networks, collect funds for the army, doctors, and people who have lost everything. Every activist, blogger, volunteer uses his trust and reputation for a good cause” – Mykhailo Fedorov,
Deputy Prime Minister — Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.
On July 28, the Ministry of Digital Affairs once again appealed to Meta regarding mass blocking of posts and accounts of bloggers, the media community, activists and ordinary users on Facebook and Instagram social networks. An official letter (copy – below) with a request to improve the processes of moderation of Ukrainian content, signed by Mykhailo Fedor, was addressed to Nick Clegg, president of global policy of the Meta corporation.
Why this happens (blocking content on Facebook and Instagram is blocked) has already been explained many times. There are two main reasons:
- the first is the automatic algorithms of social networks, which need changes, and the problem of the quality of moderation of content from Ukraine as such (the company’s content policy is not adapted to the realities of the war in Ukraine).
- the second is the excessive activity of Russian bots that complain massively about publications.
The Ministry of Digitization also called on Meta to share its own moderation rules for the Ukrainian region with Ukrainian users. This will help to better understand what content the moderation system perceives as dangerous, so it will allow you to avoid mass blocking.
Let’s hope that Meta will finally pay attention to this serious problem and allocate more resources to create more effective mechanisms to counter Russian propaganda and bots. And others will not stand aside either — yes, Google, it’s time to finally open a YouTube office in Ukraine.
