In a significant development, Meta the parent company of the social media site Facebook has removed the IDs and Pages that were being used to support the foreign agent law and protestors. Most of the IDs and pages were directly or indirectly linked to Russia.
The content posted on these pages directly targeted the protestor and supported the ruling party of Georgia the “Georgian Dream.” As per the statement issued by Meta they have removed seventy-six Facebook accounts and thirty Facebook pages.
Moreover in the crackdown against these pages Meta also removed almost eleven accounts from Instagram. All of these pages targeted the three South Caucasus countries namely Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan.
The main reason cited by Meta behind this move is the violation of its policies “against coordinated inauthentic behaviour.” Moreover the statement added that it is totally unacceptable that content is being posted in favour of a particular political party without knowing the exact facts and this is also happening while violating our community’s policies.
The International Society for Fair Elections and Democracy (ISFED) a civil society organization working at the local level also helped Meta conclude the investigation. In a social media post Facebook posted that we have always stood by our community policies and will not tolerate any such violation in this regard.
It is worth mentioning that this is not the first incident of Meta removing content. The Social media giant’s parent company took a similar action last year as well. Meta takes action against the 100 accounts and pages on its platforms linked to the Georgian government’s Department of Strategic Communications for the same reason last year as well. Those removed accounts also posted material supporting the government’s undemocratic policies.
Notably Georgia has adopted the much controversial foreign agent law despite being vetoed by the President. The opposition parties are blaming the Government for stifling the independent media voice with the implementation of this law.
As per the law NGO and CSOs, and other organizations have to register themselves if they are receiving more than 20 percent of their funding from foreign countries.
