On Sept. 5, Ukrainian Facebook users were shocked as the world's biggest social network seemed to deliberately overlook some abusive posts related to the war in Ukraine's east.
A day before, on Sept. 4, Facebook user Xela Rekrap posted a picture of the body of a dead Ukrainian soldier hanging on the high voltage wires. A brutal commentary accompanied the image.
“A minute of soldier’s humour. Starobesheve village. Our militants hung a dead Ukrainian trooper on the wires with the help of a fire truck. Let him fly,” read the description.
The Times reported on Sept. 7 that the soldier was killed by a blast that threw his body to the cables 20 meters above ground.
It was reported that Ukrainian army backed off their positions in Donetsk Oblast so pro-Russian terrorists backed by Russian regular army resumed control over Starobesheve, Elenovka, Konstantinovka and Telmanovka villages on Sept. 4.
More than 75 users have shared the post, some of them outraged by the image. However, it seems that Facebook ignored reports of several users about the picture.
On Sept. 5 Roman Shraik, founder of Ukrainian humor website www.durdom.in.ua and one of the most popular Ukrainians on Facebook, wrote a post complaining about the image being not removed by Facebook. According to him, it was a third time that he reported offensive anti-Ukrainian content published on Facebook, but each time Facebook ruled that the content wasn’t violating the network’s rules.
Several other users commented on Shraik’s post, adding that they also reported the dead soldier photo but received a message saying that the image met the rules of Facebook.
The Facebook response said that “the content was verified by considering the signs of sensitive and inappropriate humor, and it was identified that this post does not violate Facebook Community Standards.”
The user who posted the image, evidently a supporter of the anti-government rebels fighting in eastern Ukraine, boasted on his Facebook page that “Facebook stands with us,” referring to the fact that the social network didn’t remove the content.
However, the picture disappeared later on Sept. 5, but it remains unclear if it was Facebook who deleted it, or the user himself. A Kyiv Post journalist reported the image and got a notification saying that “the post was deleted before the complaint was considered.” Soon another notification came, saying that Facebook revised the decision on report about the photo and “deleted it as it violates our Community Standards.”
In an emailed commentary to Kyiv Post, a Facebook spokesman admitted that the network should have reacted faster to remove the image.
“We expect people that want to use Facebook to report on violence to do so in a responsible manner, such as sharing content to condemn it. Upon further review we found that this photo had not been shared responsibly so we should have removed it in the first instance,” the spokesperson wrote, adding that “with more than 1.3 billion people using Facebook across the world we don’t always get it right.”
Even though the picture was deleted, the user continued to post news and pictures supporting and promoting the rebels and their cause and writing humiliating posts about Ukrainian army.
The following video shows the battlefield of Starobesheve village in Donetsk Oblast on Sept. 4 where Ukrainian army was defeated by Russia-backed insurgents. The 9th minute of the video includes the scene where killed Ukrainian trooper is hanging on the high voltage wires. WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT.
