Ukrainian media VS Meta: how the platform limits publication of verified content by independent local publishers
For more information on the work of local media during the wartime, see our previous report:
For years the Ukrainian media have directed a significant part of their resources on distributing content on Facebook. It’s hard to tell whether this strategy is right or wrong, but it’s the fact that the Ukrainian publishers, expecting growth opportunities from Facebook audience, are investing in advertising, hiring SMM specialists and by all means stressing the importance of this platform in their strategies.
In fact, MDF’s Ukrainian Local News Emergency Fund was inspired by that same media distribution and consumption pattern in Ukraine. The idea behind that program was simple - since the start of the full-fledged invasion, most people have significantly increased news consumption on the internet. Initially, the program was designed to boost independent local news publishers’ presence on the most popular platforms and help communities get verified information.
As we started working with local publishers on their audience development strategies, we noticed that in each new cohort of participating organizations many had certain issues with their pages on Facebook, which for most local publishers is the top audience source. A closer look revealed that pages were getting demonetized or even cut off organic distribution for violating community rules, which in most cases meant posting news content that had certain trigger words like “Azov battalion” or contained video footage from the frontline. Most of that content was news in the public interest of the affected communities.
As mentioned earlier, these violations - often unnoticed by overworked page admins in the first weeks and months of the invasion - affected a page’s organic reach and/or access to monetization on the platform. A page’s status can be checked via Page Quality, which is a special section in the depth of Facebook Business Account that goes from green (no violations) to yellow (some violations; monetization partially off) to red (significant violations; organic reach limited; no monetization).
Having realized the scope of the problem, we started checking Page Quality for the independent local news publishers we work with, and that resulted in the following study.
During 7 months of the full-scale war the majority of the Ukrainian publishers suffered from the lack of communication with Facebook, while seeing a decline of organic reach of content shown in the feeds of users. Facebook’s Page Quality tool helps measure this indicator via showing the status of the page in green, yellow or red. Green color means that everything is OK, yellow stands indicates that there are certain violations resulting in limited monetization and red means the violations are severe enough to limit a page’s organic reach and all monetization. Some 27 (46%) out of 59 national and local independent media are in the “yellow” and “red” zones. A third of independent publishers cannot reach their audience.
The reasons for such a state of affairs are hard to distinguish. We asked the publishers to share their insight.
In general, editorial teams name two main reasons for limitations imposed by the social network. The first one is that the page is posting too often. The second is the violation of the Community Guidelines with war-related content, which happens more frequently. For example, one publisher from the central region of Ukraine still has the “yellow” page status caused by content marked as sensitive by Facebook:
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...it [yellow page status] still hangs since March. Because of the post about Bucha [massacre], it seems. It contained a photo of the dead ones. Facebook deleted it. And the yellow mark should have been gone by August, but, alas…
Also, according to the Ukrainian publishers, Facebook moderators seems pay a lot of attention to the posts where the Russian military forces are described by the words that are identified as “hate speech” or “sensitive content”. There are many examples that show this. Moreover, large pages of national-level publishers see similar problems:
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The words “moskali” [Ukrainian slur for Russians] and, I think, “orki” [Ukrainian derogatory term for Russian soldiers] in the post description. We contacted them [Facebook support] regarding the ban. And even deleted those people who posted that from the page editors list, but we are still banned…
- a publisher from the Western part of Ukraine, “red” status
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The only version we have is that we are writing about the identification [of Russian war crimes suspects] and use different words
- a publisher from the Western part of Ukraine, “yellow” status
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The yellow strike appeared in May for the “moskali” word in post description
- a publisher from the Western part of Ukraine, “yellow” status
There is still a risk to be banned by Facebook for publishing posts about “Azov” as the combat unit of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, its representatives and/or showing its symbols (flag, chevrons):
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The first time we got banned was when we posted something about Azov or Azovstal. There were photos, but all of them were captioned according to all the guidelines
- a publisher from Southern part of Ukraine, “red” status
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[We got] red color, because we posted a photo of the dead soldier holding the flag of Azov. And we expressed our condolences to his family in the post description. The appeal did not work out. A support representative answered that the system could not be mistaken. Also, they explained that the reason for the ban is the assault on the memory of WW2 war victims. The latter was told us by phone [the publication succeeded to reach the Facebook support by phone]
- a publication from Central part of Ukraine, “red” status
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Previously we had automatic sharing of our live broadcasts to 6 [Facebook] groups from our page. I don’t know, maybe this is the reason
- a publication from the Western part of Ukraine, “red” status
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When a new journalist joined us, she shared her articles to different groups, shared from her own account, but because she was also one of the admins of our page and we also reposted those posts, we got marked as “spam”. Our colleague believes she tried to post into some closed group and its admin got irritated and reported the content as spam.
- media from the Western part of Ukraine, “yellow” status
Apart from that, any pages from Luhansk and Donetsk regions are banned from running ads on the platform. This is because of the global sanctions that were also applied to temporarily occupied territories. Sometimes adding an external admin with a different “place of registration” in another region helps. This problem has persisted since the beginning of the full-scale war and only on a very limited number of occasions could be resolved.
As it became clear from the interviews with these publications, the advertising accounts linked to the profiles registered in towns and villages from these two regions get automatically banned. So, to have a possibility of paid content promotion, editors have to involve external specialists with registered ad accounts from regions other than Donetsk and Luhansk. It means that the publications with audiences in the need of verified content even more than anywhere else face double limitations from the platform.
Also, due to the lack of transparency editorial teams often misunderstand the line where publication of content gets marked as spam. That is why the respondents use “maybe”, “as our colleague believes”, “it’s more likely that..” when they describe the next:
For this study, we surveyed 57 editorial teams as regards their page quality index. For those publications that had yellow or red status we conducted additional structured interviews. All data was cross-checked via Page Quality tool by the research team for each publication.
Andrey Boborykin
Executive Director of the UP. Expert in digital marketing, development of media products and media communities, building funding models for the media.
Maksym Sribnyy
Master of the Mohyla School of Journalism, researcher at the Media Development Foundation. Specialist in content analysis of media, quantitative and qualitative methods of media evaluation
Research & Insights MDF is a research department within the Media Development Foundation that is focused on studying media business models and management practices. This team also studies the development of local news in Ukraine and produces an annual report on this topic.
