The Facebook on Saturday evening restored the URL of naanugauri.com—the Kannada news website which had been blocked since Thursday afternoon. However, the people running the website that was launched in memory of slain activist-journalist Gauri Lankesh, are not convinced that the Facebook had removed the URL and its posts "in error", as claimed by the social media platform.
In response to the article that appeared in THE WEEK, Facebook has clarified that it was an "error" and apologised for the "mistake".
"The url - www.naanugauri.com as well as the posts that mentioned the URL were removed in error (technical issue) and have now been restored. We apologise for the mistake," said the Facebook company spokesperson in the mail.
The website was suspended on July 23, at 3.30 pm and restored on July 25 evening. The members of the Gauri Memorial Trust which runs the website contended that they have had a long running issue with the FB. Naanugauri.com was launched as a daily news portal on April, 2018.
"We appreciate the fact that FB has restored it and we welcome it. But we are still skeptical about their statement. The FB instant article option was not allowed for naanugauri.com despite our several requests in the past. Next, we noticed our FB reach, which stood around 1.5 lakh page views in the beginning of the lockdown, started declining over the last three months. Now, this blocking has come after we published a scam by a BJP leader from coastal Karnataka. We have sufficient proof and video evidence related to the scandal," claimed Dr Vasu, the website in-charge.
"We got information that some people in the coastal Karnataka region were doing mass reporting against us to FB in a systematic way. We suspect FB blocked us based on these reports. We object to this as we expect FB to have a mechanism to review their decision. Moreover, we see so many websites causing polarisation on FB. We will launch a campaign against such actions of FB from tomorrow," added Vasu.
While the Facebook claims it was only a "technical issue", the website condemned the FB for "blocking" the website without giving any valid reason.
"When the website was blocked, we went through the Facebook option seeking a review of their decision (to block). Some readers tried to post the URL and then registered their opinion saying they disagree with the FB opinion (that the link was violating the community standards). Soon, prominent people like Teesta Setalwad, Jignesh Mevani and Prakash Rai posted it on their FB wall and registered their protest," Vasu said.
The FB has acted after going through the mainstream media reports about the incident and after it created a buzz on the social media, say members of the Trust.
In its earlier statement, the website had alleged that FB had disallowed sharing of the links to the news articles published on the website and hidden all links previously posted on the platform and called it a "dark day".
"With growing polarisation across the country, some people associated with far-right wing politics and having malicious intent might have campaigned against us and reported our links to FB. But we had hoped FB would have some basic system to verify such false campaigns against trustworthy media houses," said the website. It also has urged FB to restore the URL to help establish mutual cooperation "to build ethical journalism".
