Venezuela denounces Facebook’s “digital totalitarianism” for blocking Maduro’s page

Venezuela denounced this Sunday the “digital totalitarianism” of Facebook after the social network announced that it blocked, for a month, the capacity of the president Nicolas 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 published today.

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

Blocking the Facebook account came after the president broadcasted live, on March 21, a balance of his Government’s fight against covid-19, in which he promoted the drug Carvativir, of local production and that the Venezuelan Government and Maduro himself assure serves to combat the SARS-COV-2 virus.

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

In addition, the decision to freeze the page of the president is due to the “repeated violations of the rules” of Facebook, said the source.

“We follow WHO (World Health Organization) guidelines that say that there is currently no medication to cure the virus,” the spokesperson explained.

But Venezuela said this Sunday that the measure constitutes an act of “censorship” proper to a media dictatorship, which “In turn, it shows an extension of the blockade and boycott that the North American empire illegally applies against our people to consummate the so-called ‘regime change’ by force.”

Mature had already criticized the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, for not allowing him to upload some videos in which he talked about the Carvativir.

“They censor all the videos where I show the Carvativir”, the president denounced 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 that support the effectiveness of Carvativir, something that has not happened, although Maduro insists on qualifying this drug as “miraculous”.