Can Uzbek officials influence the Facebook administration?

The other day, director of the Center for Economic Development, economist Yuliy Yusupov complained that several of his posts were deleted on Facebook.

“After the complaints of my friends, Facebook restored all my posts, except for one – about lawlessness with the seizure of property in the Fergana region. The khokim of the Fergana region was the most influential of all. He even found an approach to Zuckerberg,” he said on his Facebook page.

How representatives of the regional administration can influence Facebook is still unknown, but is this possible?

Firstly, it is unlikely that Facebook employees will personally communicate with the Fergana khokimiyat to “protect their honor and dignity”. 

Secondly, it’s very difficult to contact the administration of a social network, unless you use key phrases such as “pornography”, “violence”, “aggressive language”, “violation of certain rights, including copyright and advertising”, “discrimination”, “cruelty” etc. Even in such cases, Facebook does not learn the whole case. They can simply remove the material and that’s it.

Thirdly, specially trained people who can correctly write a “complaint” can play a huge role. A couple of posts, a few complaints in a row and all. A user who writes relevant topics and critical materials becomes a person who cannot be trusted.

In April 2018, the Facebook administration for the first time published internal rules that govern it, making decisions  on the removal of  texts, photos, pictures or videos from its site, as well as which may serve as a reason to block users.

According to the document, a content containing “plausible statements about the intention to commit  violence against any person, group of people or places”, as well as  calls for such violence, instructions for the production or use of  weapons  (if the purpose is to kill people or inflicting injury on them), disclosing the identity of people at particular risk, etc. will be deleted.

“Any content containing statements of intent, calls to action or statements supporting violence in connection with the outcome of the election” is subject to removal.

Another paragraph of the rules prohibits the publication on Facebook of any content praising terrorist organizations and terrorists, serial and mass murderers, as well as criminal organizations and their actions.

It should be recalled that in April 2018, Facebook founder and head Mark Zuckerberg answered questions related to the CambridgeAnalytica scandal (the company could use the data of 87 million Facebook users to manipulate their opinions before the U.S. presidential election). In both cases, Congress representatives, among other things, asked Facebook questions under what conditions the social network removes user posts, how it fights against propaganda of violence, terrorism and bullying on its site. Then the head of Facebook admitted that he did not have enough personnel for an individual approach.

Kun.uz also contacted the administration of the Facebook group “Tashkent-Demolition” as some officials are often criticized in this group. According to the group administrator Farida Charif, they have not had such problems yet.

“So far this has not happened. Sometimes Facebook sends me alerts, such as this publication violates the rules of the community. And this is always about some kind of pornography. I delete such posts. Perhaps, trolls tossed pornography. Moreover, they (Facebook) themselves do not delete, but only warn, we ourselves remove such posts or comments,” she said.

Most likely, the problem between Yuliy Yusupov and the Fergana khokimiyat became a “personal matter”. That is why specially trained people are trying to denigrate the name of an economist. In turn, his posts are assessed as “violation of the rules of the community” as some individuals endlessly file complaints.