WHAT IS THE RUSSIAN FOR FACEBOOK? katsap” [Russky Goatbeard], Facebook has every right to block it as hate speech. It’s a separate issue that for many years they didn’t implement that rule. The rally episode would have been outrageous if they had stood by the decision, but they didn’t. The hate speech issue is different. A huge number of people who support Putin, the Kremlin, the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Lugansk People’s Republic, including the military correspondents of Russian television channels, were blocked after complaints from the Ukrainian side, denunciations, not to mince words. They didn’t go running to Zuckerberg to complain about it, but the Ukrainians did. If we look at the chronology, we will see that Ukrainians began sending denunciations long before Russians. Actually, it was a habit the Russians picked up from the Ukrainians. Ukraine has exactly the same cybertroops as Russia, and they use exactly the same technology. VA: But you yourself joined in the provocation over honkies and Pushkin, and you too got blocked. AN: What provocation did I join in? I wasn’t involved in it. I wrote about it, and I was banned for writing about it. VA: But you used that keyword. AN: No, I didn’t. I was passing on truthful journalistic information about the fact that Facebook was blocking users over a certain poem by Pushkin. I didn’t use the word ‘honkies’. I had a screenshot of the letter from Facebook’s administration to a user who had posted a poem by Pushkin. That word was not present in my text. VA: So, was the blocking of Ksenzov just another accident? They don’t give a damn whether a denunciation is right or wrong. You get denounced, we block you. AN: That wasn’t an accident: that was Facebook policy. It has nothing to do with the politics of the authorities, Russian or Ukrainian. It is a matter of a relationship between a social network and its users. It is a very strict relationship, but it’s nothing to do with the authorities. It’s do to with actual people. That relationship is as follows: “Dear friends, We know you are using Facebook to fight a war. You write in Russian. For us you are second-class users. We don’t make money out of you. If you get denounced, we block you. Whether it’s a Ukrainian or a Russian denunciation, we block you, irrespective of the merits of the case. We know that normal users who write in Russian don’t get denounced. The people who do are those trying to fight a war on our network.” They have no idea of the merits of all the claims and counterclaims. The commercial entity known as Facebook is disinclined to waste significant moderating resources on checking who’s denouncing who in the Cyrillic segment. They don’t care whether a denunciation is justified or not. You’ve been denounced, we block you. This is a consequence of the fact that they just find us tedious. VA: I don’t think you’re right in saying Facebook doesn’t make money from Russian users. AN: That’s my take on it. There are a whole lot of facts here. Thousands of blockings on both sides. Idiotic blockings, which are quite unlike Facebook’s practice in other languages. If you were to quote Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” in an English account, no one would block you for anti-Semitism. VA: So, it’s not a matter of a lack of expertise among the staff in the notorious Dublin office? 10