Facebook censorship on West Papua ... a "cruel irony". Image: RSF/PMC |
By David Robie
THE SILENCE from Facebook is deafening and disturbing.
At first, when I lodged my protests earlier this month to Facebook over the immediate removal of a West Papua news item from the International Federation of Journalists shared with three social media outlets, including West Papua Media Alerts and The Pacific Newsroom, I thought it was rogue algorithms gone haywire.
The “breach of community standards” warning I also received on my FB page was unacceptable, but surely a mistake?
However, with subsequent protests by the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders (RSF) media freedom watchdog and the Sydney office of the Asia-Pacific branch of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), the world’s largest journalist organisation with more than 600,000 members in 187 countries, falling on deaf ears, I started wondering about the political implications of this censorship.
READ MORE: Melanesia: Facebook algorithms censor article about press freedom in West Papua
We had all complained separately to the FB director of policy for Australia and New Zealand, Mia Garlick, and were ignored.