Fortanga, the only independent media source in Ingushetia, has been subjected to a series of cyber-attacks in social media. Last night an unknown person initiated the blocking of the editorial board’s official Facebook page, which has over 2,500 followers.
Facebook offers to settle the trademark infringement issue. For this, the community leadership asks that you contact the «rights holder» at khasan.khalitov@inbox.ru. A surprising coincidence with the opposition Chechen blogger Khasan Khalitov. Earlier, Fortanga published Khalitov’s appeal to the head of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
Fortanga’s feedback from an anonymous user began to receive threats to block the publication’s remaining Facebook group with an audience of more than 6,000 users, the Telegram channel, and the site itself.
A user nicknamed Make War is asking for money to restore accounts.
We do not rule out that the blocking actions are connected with provocative messages about journalist Isabella Yevloyeva, lawyer Basir Ozdoyev and activist Isropil Nalgiev.
The authors of these messages offered dirt on law enforcement officers in the case of the blogger Adam Khamchiev, as well as in the rally case. The unknown persons, using fictitious names, wrote that they were from the law enforcement agencies, that they knew about the injustice in these cases, and sincerely wanted to help people. Only for «proof» a money order was required.
Previously, we reported that the official Instagram page of Fortanga, which has about 110,000 followers, has been blocked. The editorial team attributes the page shutdown to active news coverage of political, economic and social life in Ingushetia.
The editorial board contacted Instagram’s support service about the blocking.
Previously, Fortanga has also repeatedly reported attacks on its Instagram account. Recently the page was attacked by a virus, and within a few hours it was flooded with several thousand comments of the same type, praising the head of Chechnya. The editorial board then had to close the Instagram profile for a while.
Suspicious bot activity on the page was observed in 2021, during the September elections, and during the border agreement protests in 2018. At the same time, a number of Instagram pages were blocked in Ingushetia.
The opposition Instagram account «inline06» was also blocked a few months ago.
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