Tech companies declare war on right wing

Recently, Facebook has picked up on an old habit of deleting right-wing content with virtually no prior warning or reasons. The latest victims of the tech companies' strictness are the social media pages of Hungary's ruling Fidesz party in Vac and Budapest’s 9th district (Ferencvaros), but earlier, the profiles of popular right-wing journalist Zsolt Bayer and many of Megafon’s opinion leaders were also blocked overnight.

Logos-Stock Pictures Fotó: ARTUR WIDAK

This spring, the censors of YouTube also launched a clampdown and deleted a channel set up by Pesti Sracok (PS, a right-wing online community portal) in September 2022. According to Social Blade, the channel had more than 54,000 subscribers and around 70,000 views a day, but on certain days during the two weeks before the cancellation, it had 240,000 views.

In its statement sent to our newspaper, Google tried to explain why it had taken down Pesti Sracok's channel. "We terminated the YouTube channel of Pesti Sracok, because its creation circumvented our earlier action to terminate their channel, which we removed in February 2020 for violating child safety terms and regulations," they wrote.

It is worth noting that the official Facebook page of Daniel Deak, a senior analyst at the XXI Century Institute and a member of Megafon, was also banned in the spring. Last February, in the midst of the election campaign, Megafon opinion leader Daniel Bohar was also forced to set up a new Facebook profile after his previous page was banned following complaints from left-wing users.

Cover photo: Illustration (Photo: Artur Widak)