The Federal Agency of News has reportedly filed a litigation in the federal court to abolish Facebook’s ban on its account over election meddling allegations. Reportedly, FAN claims that it is a legitimate news company and the ban should be rescinded at the earliest.
Apparently, Facebook deleted FAN’s account earlier this year as it expunged pages associated to the St Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency, which was summoned by the special counsel Robert Mueller for saturating social media with false information in a bid to strew discord in the run-up to the 2016 election.
FAN and Zubarev, the lone shareholder of FAN, stated that they were erroneously swept up in Facebook’s elimination, which abolished over 270 Russian language pages and accounts, as per the complaint.
Reportedly, the lawsuit claims that FAN is an authentic, independent, and legitimate news organization which issues reports that are germane and of interest to the masses.
According to sources familiar with the knowledge of the matter, Federal Agency of News has accepted that it previously had its office in the same building as the Internet Research Agency. Moreover, it has hired Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova, the Russian lady charged by the court lately for trying to intrude in the 2018 congressional elections, as its chief accountant.
As per the charge sheet for the case, Alekseevna Khusyaynova was designated as the chief accountant for the Project Lakhta, an information warfare campaign, that is being prosecuted by Justice Department’s assistant attorneys in Virginia’s eastern district.
Authorized reports cite that the lawsuit claimed Facebook to have acted as a member of the government in erroneously intruding its freedom of speech. The lawsuit further cited the 1964 Civil Rights Act for charging Facebook of discrimination due to its Russian origins.
Social media networking giant Facebook has apparently declined to comment on the matter.