site.btaTelus Representative Deny Company Illegally Blocks Accounts on Social Media

Representatives of Telus, the company that moderates Facebook content in Bulgaria, denied that there are any illegally blocked accounts on the social network. During Thursday's meeting of the parliamentary Committee on e-Government and Information Technology, representatives of the company from Canada provided an opinion on how the moderation of posts and comments is carried out.

The aim of the hearing was to "to explore the problems with moderation that are visible. People, regardless of political affiliation, express opinions on social media that are deleted and the owners of those accounts are blocked," said Bozhidar Bozhanov, MP for Continue the Change and former e-government minister.

Marilyn Tyfting, Chief Corporate Officer at Telus International, said they had come to Bulgaria to support their team in the country. Over the past two months, false accusations have been leveled against Telus International Bulgaria, alleging that the company and employees are deliberately supporting the Russian government by illegally blocking Facebook user accounts and removing posts that criticize Putin and the Russian regime, while purposefully leaving pro-Russian propaganda on the platform."Telus International does not have - and has never had – ties to the Russian government," she added. 

Tyfting stressed that the company does not create the content viewing policies, but enforces its customers' policies in compliance with current law.   

 Committee chair Kalina Konstantinova read a statement sent by Meta, according to which the content is controlled by a combination of three components - artificial intelligence, human content reviewers and user reports. The teams speak over 70 languages. Bulgarian content that requires language expertise is vetted by Bulgarian moderators, the document states.

The meeting was broken up due to continuing work in plenary. In the meantime, the National Assembly adjourned its sitting for lack of a quorum, after MPs objected that committee sittings were going on at the same time as the plenary sitting.