Facebook, Twitter Struggling in Fight against Balkan Content Violations

Twitter gave no notice or explanation of the suspension, but Ana Toskic Cvetinovic, the executive director of Partners Serbia, had a hunch - that it was the result of a "coordinated attack", probably other Twitter users submitting complaints about how the NGO was using its account.

"We tried for days to get at least some information from Twitter, like what could be the cause and how to solve the problem, but we haven't received any answer," Toskic Cvetinovic told BIRN. "After a month of silence, we saw that a new account was the only option." 

Twitter lifted the suspension in January, again without explanation. But Partners Serbia is far from alone among NGOs, media organisations and public figures in the Balkans who have had their social media accounts suspended without proper explanation or sometimes any explanation at all, according to BIRN monitoring of digital rights and freedom violations in the region.

Experts say the lack of transparency is a significant problem for those using social media as a vital channel of communication, not least because they are left in the dark as to what can be done to prevent such suspensions in the future.

But while organisations like Partners Serbia can face arbitrary suspension, half of the posts on Facebook and Twitter that are reported as hate speech, threatening violence or harassment in Bosnian, Serbian, Montenegrin or Macedonian remain online, according to the results of a BIRN survey, despite confirmation from the companies that the posts violated rules.

The investigation shows that the tools used by social media giants to protect their community guidelines are failing: posts and accounts that violate the rules often remain available even when breaches are acknowledged, while others...