Canada: Social media platform, Facebook, censors Ukrainian journalist, Ustia Stefanchuk. CFWIJ registers protest.

July 9, 2021, Ottawa- Ukrainian journalist, Ustia Stefanchuk, who is now based in Canada recently published a historical testimony, on her Facebook page, about the torture her ancestors were subjected to at the hands of Soviet forces in 1941. Her Facebook page was abruptly taken down after she published her post without any prior warning or notification. Although the page was restored later, the company offered Ustia no explanation regarding which community standard she was in violation of, or what caused her work to be reinstated.

On July 3, Ustia published a detailed historical account of the atrocities committed in Lviv by the Soviet armed forces during the Second World War. The post included photographs as evidence of the bloodshed, her own family history, and accounts of the murder of public intellectuals carried out by the Soviet Union as the Ukrainians fled the region. Shortly afterwards, according to Ustia, she was informed by a friend that her post and page were no longer visible to her audiences. According to Ustia when she went to review what had happened, she found that Facebook had blocked access to her account because it violated Facebook’s community standard.

 “I was a little taken aback and went to see what was going on. First Facebook sent me a standard text about a 30-day ban because of this post, which violates, it turns out, community standards. After that, I received a notification that my account has been blocked without the right to renew it,” Ustia told a Ukrainian publication

According to Ustia, she has been previously blocked from the platform for writing about Ukraine before, however, matters promptly got resolved any time she wrote to Facebook’s management. In fact, on all those occasions, Facebook admitted to be in the wrong. Thus, the sudden permanent revocation of her presence on the social media platform came across as a surprise. Not only did she not have a “right to appeal” Facebook’s decision, there was also no way to reclaim the work she had already published on her page. Despite this, however, when Utsia wrote to Facebook’s management in Ukraine demanding an explanation, her account was reinstated on July 8. There was, however, no clarification given regarding why the content was censored in the first place, nor about why the decision was reversed later. Ustia believes this contributes to the erasure of the historical Ukrainian experience.

The Coalition For Women In Journalism has repeatedly warned against the powers that tech giants, and especially social media platforms, enjoy with bare minimum regulation. This is also particularly dangerous when, as has been reported several times, the top management at these platforms collude with governments around the world without any transparency whatsoever. Or simply are not diverse enough to understand local political nuances while moderating content on their website. These attempts of deliberate censorship or blatant ignorance can result in severe political repercussions for communities around the world. The management at Facebook needs to urgently make their moderation process transparent and clarify to Ustia Stefanchuk the process that led to the censorship and its reversal to avoid any such violations of freedom of expression in the future.