A giant thumbs-up button marks the entrace to the Facebook campus, located at 1601 Willow Road in Menlo Park, CA. Photo: Jason Doiy/Law.com.Alleged Russian Trolls Fight Back With a Suit Against Facebook
A Russian organization whose members have been accused of meddling in the 2016 election sued Facebook on Tuesday, claiming its page was unfairly removed from the platform.
November 20, 2018 at 06:49 PM
3 minute read
The original version of this story was published on The Recorder
A Russian organization whose accountant was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year has sued Facebook, claiming its page was a legitimate news source that the social media company unfairly removed.
In a suit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the Federal Agency of News and its general director, Evgeniy Zubarev, sought damages and an injunction preventing Facebook from deleting its page. Facebook deleted the FAN page in April during a sweep of Russian accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, which has been accused of meddling in the 2016 election.
Christopher Sullivan, a San Francisco-based partner at Diamond McCarthy, is representing FAN. Neither he nor Facebook immediately responded to requests for comment.
St. Petersburg, Russia-based FAN said it is a “legitimate news agency” and that the only similarity it has with the IRA is that the two organizations used to share a building and the groups' ”national origin and that of their members.” FAN said it has been wrongfully accused of being part of U.S. election-focused “Project Lakhta.”
“FAN is not an entity within 'Project Lakhta' and has no relationship with 'Project Lakhta,' the IRA or Glavset,” FAN said in the suit. “To the contrary, FAN is a news gathering and dissemination organization. In that capacity, FAN gathers news from conventional sources and adheres to journalistic standards in its operations.”
FAN also addressed the indictment of its accountant Elena Khusyaynova in October over alleged involvement with the IRA. The group said the accountant could not exercise “authority over the editorial content.” FAN also said it believed it was Khusyaynova's sole employer.
The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election has also alleged Zubarev's predecessor, FAN founder and first general director Aleksandra Yurievna Krylova, was an employee of the IRA. FAN said it has “no knowledge of this allegation” or its accuracy.
FAN said it has “never created a fictitious name or user account” or “knowingly created a false or misleading news article.”
Facebook banned FAN on April 3, alleging the group violated its terms of service. The California-based company has faced criticism in recent months over its handling of Russian election interference and delayed removal of Russian trolls. According to the suit, FAN was banned the same day as hundreds of other Russian pages the platform claimed were linked to the IRA.
FAN claims it is one of the most visited sites in Russia, and that by blocking it, Facebook has kept Russian residents from accessing information.
“Despite overwhelming evidence that it was wrong in its conclusions, Facebook continued to and continues to ban FAN from Facebook and access to hundreds of thousands of Russians who obtained their news from FAN,” FAN said in the suit. “In fact, Facebook, while claiming to protect the public from 'fake news' is actually engaging in censorship and denying FAN subscribers of access to a legitimate news organization.”
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