The shame of Russia (courtesy of Facebook)

At the weekend, 40,000 to 50,000 took to the streets of Moskva—Moscow—to protest their government’s actions in the Ukraine, at the Peace and Freedom March. I understand that media called the country’s actions ‘the shame of Russia’.
   A friend provided me with photos of the protest that he and his friends took, which I uploaded to my personal Facebook profile this morning.
   Within minutes, they vanished from my wall. Facebook has replaced them with a message to say my page cannot be loaded properly, and to try again. Seven hours later, the problem persists.
   They are still on the mobile edition but I’ve noticed that, for a public post, very few people have seen them.
   What is curious is whether Facebook has some mechanism to remove content. I remember some years ago, video content vanished, too, with Facebook making false accusations that I had uploaded copyrighted material—despite my having express authorization. I had to fight Facebook, which had adopted a guilty-till-proved-innocent approach, to keep up content I was legally entitled to upload and share. Facebook presented me, for months, with a massive notice on my home page each time I logged in, where I had to fill in a counter-notification daily to their false accusations.
   I had understood that generally copyright owners had to complain first under US law, unless, of course, your name is Kim Dotcom and US lobbyists want to make an example of you.
   So we know that Facebook does have mechanisms to take things off without any complaint being filed. And we also know there are algorithms limiting sharing.
   Given the speed with which this vanished today, I doubt anyone would have complained—and I’m hardly a target for those interested in Russian politics.
   I have since uploaded the album to my Facebook fan page—where it has not been deleted, but stats for it do not show up. Thanks to Facebook’s actions, I’ve uploaded the five images to my Tumblr as well—and here they are again, for your interest.
   We can credit Facebook for ensuring that these images were more widely shared.


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