Facebook removes Polish far-right political party account

Warsaw: Facebook on Wednesday suspended the account of the Polish far-right party Konfederacja — the country’s most popular party profile — for breaching standards including on the Covid pandemic.

The account for Konfederacja had around 670,000 followers — far higher than Poland’s two main political forces, the ruling Law and Justice (Pis) party and the opposition Civic Platform (KO) party.

“We believe in giving people a voice, but we also want to keep everyone using Facebook safe,” a spokesperson for Facebook owner Meta said in a statement.

“We have removed Konfederacja’s Facebook page for repeatedly posting content that breaks our Community standards, specifically our Covid-19 harmful misinformation and hate speech policies,” the spokesperson said.

Party leader Krzysztof Bosak called the move “absurd” and said the party had been offered “no justification” for the removal.

The party, which was founded in 2018, has 11 MPs.

Their Facebook page shared various claims related to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Janusz Cieszynski, the government’s top official in charge of digital technology, said “different views” should be allowed to be represented online.

Cieszynski said he agreed with platforms protecting their users from misinformation “but this is quite different from banning a legitimate political party that does not publish such content”.

Source: AFP