Facebook Removes Hungarian Pro-Government Newspaper Pages Weeks Before Election

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ER Editor: Eyes on the Hungarian elections on April 12. See our run-up coverage HERE.

In the last two years or so, elections in several EU countries, the UK included, have NOT gone the way the voters wanted, that much is clear. We wonder if this isn’t going to be the fate of Orban this time around. So much is appearing in the media that doubts a successful result for him in April that we wonder if the ground isn’t being prepared for some dramatic turn of events. Orchestrated, of course. Just a theory.

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Political interference? Facebook has suspended Hungarian right-wing outlets weeks before the national election.

ZOLTAN KOTTASZ

Several Facebook pages belonging to Hungarian pro-government county newspapers were rendered inaccessible on Friday, February 27th, in what could be a politically charged intervention just weeks before the country heads to the polls.

Solen Feyissa, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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According to posts circulating on Reddit, the Facebook page of Bama.hu, the Baranya county outlet published by Mediaworks, disappeared after a user complaint. The complainant reportedly argued that the page contained “war threats,” which Meta, Facebook’s parent company, deemed to be in breach of its community standards.

Shortly afterwards, the Facebook pages of Kisalfold.hu in Győr-Moson-Sopron county and Szabolcs Online in eastern Hungary were also taken down.

The affected publications belong to the pro-government media conglomerate Mediaworks. Together, the pages reportedly commanded hundreds of thousands of followers.

The timing is more than suspicious: Hungary will hold parliamentary elections on April 12, in a contest framed by conservative Prime Minister Viktor Orbán as a choice between national sovereignty and deeper integration with Brussels.

His governing Fidesz party is locked in a tight race with the opposition Tisza Party, which belongs to the Europhile European People’s Party.

Facebook’s actions resemble a co-ordinated move against right-wing media. The suspensions could influence the online information landscape during a critical phase of the campaign.

Europeanconservative.com’s Facebook page was also suspended (but later reinstated) on Friday for allegedly violating community standards by presenting “nudity or sexual activity.” The sanction relates to an article published last June analysing the withdrawal of major pornographic websites from France in protest against child-protection measures.

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