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Facebook blocks TASS post written on basis of official press statement

The agency plans to request Facebook explanations on the matter

MOSCOW, March 7. /TASS/. Facebook has blocked a TASS post about the detention of supporters of a Ukrainian radical youth group in Russia’s Voronezh as "fake" news.

The post was written on the basis of an official press statement from the Federal Security Service and the Investigative Committee. TASS insists that it put the information correctly and plans to request Facebook explanations on the matter. Apart from that, the agency plans to ask the federal oversight service in the sphere information and communications technologies and the mass media to consider this situation.

The TASS news item of February 18 says that Russia’s Federal Security Service nipped the activities of supporters of a Ukrainian radical youth group involved in propaganda of the ideology of neo-Nazism and massacre.

Facebook said the post had been cancelled at a request from the Ukrainian fact-checking service StopFake.

In March 2016, Facebook began to test various engines to combat fake news. Its menu was supplemented with an option of reporting a potentially fake news. Such posts are referred for verification to third-party organizations.

On March 27, 2020, Facebook launched a content fact-checking program in Ukraine. Ukrainian organizations VoxCheck and StopFake were chosen as partners.

RBC reported similar problems with this news on Facebook.