Facebook reportedly censors posts by Solomon Islands news outlet

Facebook has reportedly temporarily blocked posts published by an independent online news outlet in Solomon Islands after incorrectly labelling its content as “spam”.

In-Depth Solomons, a member centre of the non-profit OCCRP (Organised Crime and Corruption Reporting Project), was informed by the platform that more than 80 posts had been removed from its official page.

According to OCCRP, the outlet believes opponents of independent journalism in the country could behind the “coordinated campaign”.

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“The reporters in Solomon Islands became aware of the problem on Thursday afternoon, when the platform informed them it had hidden at least 86 posts, including stories and photos,” OCCRP reported yesterday.

“Defining its posts as spam resulted in the removal for several hours of what appeared to be everything the news organisation had posted on Facebook since March last year.”

It said the platform also blocked its users from posting content from the outlet’s website, indepthsolomons.com.sb, saying that such links went against the platform’s “community standards”.

In-Depth Solomons has received criticism for its reporting by the Solomon Islands government and its supporters, both online and in local media, OCCRP said.

Expose on PM’s unexplained wealth
In April, it published an expose into the unexplained wealth of the nation’s former prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare.

In-depth Solomons editor Ofani Eremae said the content removal “may have been the result of a coordinated campaign by critics of his newsroom to file false complaints to Facebook en masse”.

“We firmly believe we’ve been targeted for the journalism we are doing here in Solomon Islands,” he was quoted as saying.

“We don’t have any evidence at this stage on who did this to us, but we think people or organisations who do not want to see independent reporting in this country may be behind this.”

A spokesman for Meta, Ben Cheong, told OCCRP they needed more time to examine the issue.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ and permission from ABC.

Pacific Media Watch reports that in other cases of Facebook and Meta blocked posts, Asia Pacific Reports the removal of Kanaky, Palestine and West Papua decolonisation stories and human rights reports over claimed violation of “community standards”.

APR has challenged this removal of posts, including in the case of its editor Dr David Robie. Some have been restored while others have remained “blocked”.

Other journalists have also reported the removal of news posts.