Facebook Restores Russia-Linked Pages With Disclaimers

Four Russia-linked pages targeting left-leaning millennials — suspended by Facebook earlier this month — were restored Monday, The Hill reported.

Each of the Maffick Media-run Facebook pages — Soapbox, Waste-Ed, Backthen and In The Now — now carry disclaimers disclosing their affiliations with the Russian government.

"We reached out to Maffick Media to request that they disclose the affiliation of their Pages with its parent companies," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement, the news outlet reported.

"The required information has now been added to the About section of these Pages to indicate their affiliation with RT and Ruptly so people can learn who's behind the Pages they're interacting with on Facebook."

Maffick Media's majority stakeholder is Ruptly, a subsidiary of the Kremlin-funded RT, a fact not previously in the pages' descriptions.   

Facebook's decision to take down the pages Feb. 15 came after a CNN investigation of Maffick Media's ties to Moscow found 51 percent of the company is owned by Ruptly, while the other 49 percent is owned by a former RT presenter and Maffick's CEO.

The videos disseminated on the pages had gotten more than 30 million views. Many criticize U.S. foreign policy and the media from an American left-wing perspective, The Hill reported.

“As we’ve said, we continue to work on increasing Page transparency so people can get more information about the Pages they follow," a Facebook spokesperson told The Hill. "This initiative is new and we will have more to share soon.”

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