Russia's RT state TV accuses Facebook of 'censorship'

By
AFP
Russian State-funded broadcaster(RT) accused Facebook of censorship. Photo: Reuters

MOSCOW: The chief of Russian state-funded broadcaster RT said Friday Facebook was deliberately blocking posts from its documentary channel, accusing the social media giant of "censorship".

"They have been limiting the audience for our documentaries for over a month on Facebook," Margarita Simonyan wrote on her Telegram social networking account. "Nobody can see the posts."

She was referring to the Russian-language RTD channel, a part of the RT network which has over 125,000 subscribers on Facebook.

"Our guys have asked the moderators what they did wrong, but Zuckerberg's moderators are silent," Simonyan wrote of Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg.

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"We continue living in a world where American censorship has conquered," she said but didn't give any precise examples of moderators acting to stop posts from appearing.

RT brands itself as telling the truth in a media landscape dominated by the Western point of view, but is considered by several European Union states as a propaganda and disinformation project.

In France, President Emmanuel Macron in 2017 accused RT of spreading "deceitful propaganda" during the presidential election campaign.

In Britain, the Ofcom broadcasting regulator has ruled that it broke broadcasting standards on impartiality.