Azerbaijani Facebook is in fever

Baku/22.05.20/Turan: Participants in social networks in Azerbaijan, starting May 21, fix problems on their Facebook pages. This is expressed in slowing down the exchange of information or completely blocked pages.

For more than an hour, the Turan agency’s page was blocked, and its web page, starting from May 15, was subjected to a DDoS attack for three days. “We could not post our messages on a Facebook page; the page did not respond to the manipulations of our operator,” Turan Director Mehman Aliyev said. Blogger Natig Abilov, Ulvi Hasanli, Fikret Farazmazoglu and others reported problems. It is difficult to post or simply read information on popular pages, writes Ulvi Hasanli.

Recently, authorities began to use robotic trolling, which attacks Facebook sites and pages, bombarding them with a standard set of pro-government praises and curses against authorities critics.

The Ministry of Communications and High Technologies (MWET), as a regulator and coordinator of the development of electronic services, pretends that nothing is happening.

Investigative journalist Khadija Ismayilova writes that the ministry requested court approval to block the news pages of Azadliq radio, Meydan, Turan TV and the Azadliq newspaper on Facebook and via VPN.

Everything that has been happening recently on the Internet web of Azerbaijan suggests that the authorities are not willing to relax restrictions on freedom of speech and information. This is also evidenced by the recent report of "Reporters without Borders", fixing the deterioration of the situation in Azerbaijan, whose freedom of speech rating fell from 166 to 168 in the world. —0—