Venezuela denounces ‘digital totalitarianism’ of Facebook for blocking Nicolás Maduro

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Venezuela denounced this Sunday Facebook’s “digital totalitarianism” after the social network announced that it blocked, for a month, the ability of President Nicolás Maduro to publish new content for having “violated its policy against disinformation about covid-19”.

“It is evident, and so we denounce it, that we are witnessing a digital totalitarianism, exercised by supranational companies that want to impose their law on the countries of the world,” the Venezuelan government said in a statement released today.

“We deplore the unilateral actions of the Facebook company to the detriment of the freedom of expression of the citizen president,” the Caribbean country added in the text.

The blocking of Maduro’s Facebook account occurred after the president broadcast live, on March 21, an assessment of his government’s fight against covid-19. He promoted the locally produced drug Carvativir, which the Venezuelan government and Maduro himself claim is used to combat the SARS-COV-2 virus.

A Facebook spokesman told EFE yesterday that the social network deleted that video “for violating its policies against covid-19 disinformation that could put people at risk of harm.”

Also, the decision to freeze the president’s page is due to “repeated violations of the rules” of Facebook, the source said.
“We follow WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines that say there is currently no medication to cure the virus,” the spokesman explained.

But Venezuela said Sunday that the measure constitutes an act of “censorship” of its own by a media dictatorship, which “evidences in turn an extension of the blockade and boycott that the U.S. empire applies illegally against our people to consummate the so-called regime change by force.”

Maduro had already criticized Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for not allowing him to upload some videos in which he talked about Carvativir.
“They censor all the videos where I show Carvativir,” denounced the president during a government act on February 2.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) and the Venezuelan National Academy of Medicine have asked the Executive to publish the studies which support the effectiveness of Carvativir, something which has not happened, although Maduro insists on describing this drug as “miraculous”.