Well-known conservative publicist and ballet dancer Bence Apáti was hit with a 30-day Facebook ban after sharing a link to the political talk show Keménymag on Echo TV, which he is a regular guest. The video can be found here: https://youtu.be/ImGewNapYfw
Apáti told Origo.hu he was surprised because he didn’t even comment on the video.
“I just received a short notice saying I have violated community rules. I somehow managed to do that by sharing a link to a single instalment of Keménymag without any comment,” Apáti told Origo.hu
This was the second occurrence in the same day that a conservative received a Facebook ban. András Bencsik, editor-in-chief of conservative weekly Magyar Demokrata was also banned on August 22nd, without even a notice from the social media site.
Apáti said he first began receiving bans in the campaign running up to this year’s April parliamentary elections, but those were only three-day bans. He said the fresh 30-day ban was a double blow to him, because this was both his private page with over 2,500 acquaintances and the only account with administrator privileges to his official Facebook page which has over 11,000 followers.
Having no access to his official page means that he cannot remove comments with malicious intent (or “trolling” in social media parlance). Apáti sees a clear trend in the Facebook bans which hit conservative public figures in a disproportionate manner while liberal opinions have free reign.
