Smer MP Ľuboš Blaha. (source: TASR)
Facebook has cancelled the page belonging to Slovak lawmaker Ľuboš Blaha, an influential disinformation spreader, following past warnings about violating the platform’s rules forwarded to the lawmaker.
The Živé.sk website broke the news on June 14.
Blaha of the Smer party is convinced that Facebook did it on purpose, claiming the order came from coalition politicians.
“Facebook has intervened in Slovak politics,” the MP said about the decision.
Smer has launched a referendum campaign. The party wants to oust the current government. In Slovakia, municipal and regional elections will also be held in October 2022.
Blaha’s page, which the MP founded in 2018, had nearly 175,000 followers. His page had long been one of the most popular pages run by Slovak politicians on Facebook.
The day before Facebook’s decision, YouTube cancelled the channel run by another conspirator, Štefan Harabin.
Repeatedly violated rules
Facebook had long overlooked Blaha’s posts, which often attacked his political opponents and spread disinformation and hatred.
Eventually, in November 2021, Facebook removed Blaha’s anti-vaccination video full of disinformation. For example, he claimed that Covid-19 vaccines had killed patients and blamed the vaccinated for the third coronavirus wave.
The platform also punished Blaha in February 2022 when he was not allowed to post anything on his page for a day. A three-day punishment was handed down in early April, this time for spreading hatred. He had labelled the late American diplomat Madeleine Albright a “Balkan butcher”, referencing the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
As Živé.sk writes, Facebook has now decided to remove Blaha’s page because he repeatedly ignored the platform’s calls not to post content not in line with Facebook’s rules.
Money to Facebook
Recently, members of the US Congress wrote a letter to the Meta company, to which Facebook belongs, asking the company to address the massive amount of disinformation on Slovak-language Facebook.
It is not known whether the letter had an impact on Facebook’s latest decision.
Blaha, who is present on Telegram and vKontakt, has also criticised Facebook, but for censorship. Yet, he has paid thousands of euros to Facebook to promote his page on the platform.
In March of this year, the court ordered Blaha to stop spreading lies about President Zuzana Čaputová on Facebook.
