Protests have been taking place in Albania for nearly 100 days over plans to develop a luxury resort along the southern coast in a project backed by Jared Kushner, who is married to Ivanka Trump, the U.S. president’s eldest daughter, Politico reported.
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The demonstrations, dubbed the Flamingo Revolution, have since evolved into a call for the entire Albanian government to resign.
Sandro Gozi, an Italian member of the European Parliament, denounced the blocking of the Instagram accounts. “When dozens of opposition and activist accounts linked to the same protest movement disappear almost simultaneously, we cannot simply treat it as a technical problem, ” said Gozi, European Democratic Party Secretary General and MEP for Renew Europe, said in a statement circulated to the media Thursday. “Meta must explain what happened, and it must do so quickly.”
Social media has played a crucial role in the protest, allowing citizens and journalists to report in real time from their own accounts, mobilize protesters, and document scuffles with police. But in the last few weeks, they have found themselves hit with copyright infringement notices, content takedowns, and account suspensions and closures.
Those affected insist they have not violated any of Instagram’s rules, yet received copyright infringement notices for content they filmed or created themselves. Digital rights NGO Repro Uncensored said it has reviewed hundreds of instances and observed no violations of Instagram’s community standards.
“Most cases follow the same pattern: accounts are targeted through repeat copyright infringement reports, and platforms restrict or disable them before establishing whether the claims are legitimate,” says Martha Dimitratou, founder of Repro Uncensored. “Some accounts have been repeatedly targeted, while replacement accounts created after suspension have also been deactivated.”
A Meta spokesperson said in emailed comments that they are reviewing the actions taken against the accounts but have already restored some that were removed by mistake. The parent company of Instagram and Facebook added: “We are sorry for the inconvenience caused,” and noted that Instagram has an appeals process in cases where people think their accounts have been erroneously blocked.
While some users’ access has been restored, others face limits on going live and collaborating with other creators, or experience “shadow bans,” in which their content’s distribution is limited to others, usually without notice.
Agron Shehaj, a member of the Albanian Parliament and the leader of the opposition Mundësia party, had his account disabled on Wednesday evening. “If the rules governing account suspensions and removals are not clear and transparent, the government has every opportunity to extend its censorship into social media, causing potentially irreversible damage to society,” he told POLITICO.
