On Wednesday, Facebook removed the account of Konfederacja (Confederation), a Polish political party, for violating several policies including the policies on COVID-19 “misinformation.”
Konfederacja’s account had about 670,000 followers, way more following than the country’s top political parties, the ruling Law and Justice (PiS) and the opposition party the Civic Platform (KO).
In a statement, a spokesperson for Facebook’s owner Meta said: “We believe in giving people a voice, but we also want to keep everyone using Facebook safe.”
“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 added.
Konfederacja was founded in 2018, and has 11 MPs. The party’s leader, Krzysztof Bosak, called the ban “absurd” saying there was “no justification” for the ban.
Poland’s top official of digital technology Janusz Cieszynski said that online platforms should allow “different views.” He added that he agreed that online platforms should protect users from misinformation, “but this is quite different from banning a legitimate political party that does not publish such content.”
