Facebook strangely withdraws an innocent Gujarati article without stating reasons

By Rajiv Shah

Recently, reputed Gujarati journal "Sarthak Jalso", edited by well known writer Urvish Kothari, published an article by Shruti Shah. I posted its pdf version, sent to me by Urvishbhai, on a blog Shruti and I run: https://saankal.blogspot.com/.

The article is about our seven year long stay in the former Soviet Union during the turbulent period that led to the collapse of the Communist rule -- 1986-93. I thought Gujarati readers would be interested in reading the article, hence I posted a link of the blog post on Facebook.

Prompt came Facebook's reply: the link violates it's community standards, so I should withdraw the article or send my objection. I sent objection, but nothing happened!

I don't understand which community standards was the Facebook referring to. The link carried snapshots of cover of "Sarthak Jalso" and first page of Shruti's article.

The cover has photograph of two towering mountain edges very close to each other and a person, visible very small, walking in between. How can any of it be violation of community standards? Which ones, after all? Facebook appears to offer no answer.

The article is in Gujarati, and it's about Shruti as Russian-Gujarati translator in Moscow's Raduga publishing house. Facebook's algorithm wouldn't read and understand a word of it, I presume.

Something appears to be fundamentally wrong with Facebook's automatic algorithm. How can it not allow a totally innocent article's blog link with photos posted?

Sounds strange, as I also posted the same link on X, formerly Twitter, and it immediately posted it. Despite all the controversy surrounding X, it seems its algorithm is sounder than that of Facebook.

Anyway, click here to read Shruti's article, focusing on her work as translator amidst a collapsing country.

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