A representative of the Meta company said that the company impartially moderates content in Russian and Ukrainian. Jacob Turowski, director of public policy for Central and Eastern Europe at Meta Corporation, owner of social networks Facebook and Instagram, published an article on the company’s website .
He pointed out that recently there have been reports claiming that the “moderation of war-related content in Ukraine is biased” by Meta: Meta censors Ukrainian content while allowing pro-Russian propaganda to spread. According to Turovsky, “these allegations are false and there is no evidence to support them”.
Meta staff moderate posts on Facebook and Instagram in more than 70 languages, Turovski said, with Ukrainian content being reviewed by Ukrainian-speaking moderators rather than Russian-speaking moderators. In turn, moderators use established and published standards and rules, whereby “two people who rate the same content will make the same decisions.”
Turovski also pointed out that employees receive continuous training, that content to be assessed is randomly provided to them, and that reviews of the moderators’ work take place on a weekly basis: “Our regular audit of sites with content in Ukrainian and Russian (…) demonstrates a consistently high level of accuracy and matches results received on other sites and in other languages. Turovsky acknowledges that moderators can make mistakes. However, he points out that it is a mistake to believe that Meta Corporation is moderating content in a biased way and for someone’s benefit.
Recall that in particular, in the summer of 2022, the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine appealed to the Meta Corporation with a call to change the moderation rules due, as stated in the letter of Minister Mikhail Fedorov, “Massive blocking of messages and accounts of Ukrainian public opinion leaders, bloggers, volunteers and ordinary users on social networks Facebook and Instagram.
In January 2023, Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov wrote on Telegram: “Meta promised not to block content about the Azov regiment. We agreed on this with Nick Clegg, president of global corporate policy, and Monica Bickert, vice president of moderation policy, at a meeting in Davos.
