The suspension of a belonging to the Russian television station RT Facebook page has caused outrage in Moscow. „We have not broken any Facebook rules,“ complained RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonjan today in the messenger service Telegram. Facebook has the „popular“ side of the English RT project „In the Now“ blocked after a report by the US channel CNN, „without explaining the allegations“.
The CNN report revealed that „In the Now“, like RT, is funded by the Russian government. Simonjan argued that it should not be a problem that the site did not openly communicate Russian financing to its users. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov demanded a „Facebook statement regarding the exact reasons“ for the suspension. The social network is a „lever“ for Washington, he added.
Videos as „bait“
The Facebook page of „In the Now“ was not available today. On the video platform YouTube, „In the Now“ declares its intention to build a „community of attentive media consumers around important, curious and targeted content“. Launched in 2014, the YouTube channel does not link to RT or Russia and has 2.8 million page views. The blocked Facebook page counted according to Simonjan four million subscribers and 2.5 billion views.
The EU-funded project EU vs. Disinfo (EU Against Misinformation) said that „In the Now“ was created for a young audience that can not relate to RT’s political reports. Videos about the cleansing of the oceans and growing atheism would have a „high emotional and entertainment value“ and served as „bait“ to „camouflage“ the project’s ties with Russia, it said.
Facebook said it deleted more than 500 Russian-owned pages last month. Most of them had connections to employees of the Russian state news agency Sputnik, headed by Simonjan.
