Is Fidesz going to war with Facebook?

In most countries, Facebook will introduce ‘whitelists’, which will contain unregulated safe media products. However, it will not be introduced in Hungary.

As reported by index.hu, prior to the European Parliamentary elections on the 26^th of May, Facebook has decided to regulate the advertising on its feeds in order to restrain and filter the spread of biased and fake news. Sites on whitelists will be exempt from this regulation.

In Hungary no one was exempted from this censure because according to Facebook’s chiefs none of the country’s media outlets are sufficiently reliable. The explanation for this was revealed in a face-to-face conversation with a Facebook employee, whose simple reason was ‘KESMA’, which is Fidesz’s overarching organisation for its media outlets.

According to hvg.hu, this move is linked to Századvég – an organisation associated with the government – who proposed the regulation of the Californian social media giant. Their ideas include declaring Facebook as a mass media medium site so that it is under the jurisdiction of Hungarian law, subjecting Facebook’s censors to punishment and transferring ownership of Facebook to minority shareholders, as reported by origo.hu.

Századvég are obsessed with the topic; based on a recent study they conducted in the 28 EU countries, they found that most people do not trust social media platforms like Facebook.

24.hu later reported a statement from the government that they are not planning to amend any social media laws. After Index’s inquiry on whether they are considering any of Századvég’s suggestions, the government asserted that this is “fake news”.

At the beginning of the year the EU accused Fidesz of influencing the Hungarian media.  Earlier this month we reported DK critisising Fidesz for planning to regulate Facebook.

Featured image: www.facebook.com/MarkZuckerberg & www.facebook.com/OrbánViktor

Source: index.hu, hvg.hu, origo.hu, 24.hu, mti.hu