Facebook Continues to Restrict Sharing Contents from Borkena Ethiopian News Portal 

Borkena

December 12, 2020 

Facebook has been restricting borkena Ethiopian news portal contents since the Ethiopian government started law enforcement operation in the Tigray region of Ethiopia.  We would like to make it clear to readers that borkena has no affiliation with Ethiopian government or any private business entities. 

The cause for borkena has always been Ethiopia and will remain so. Apart from submission from dedicated and patriotic Ethiopians in the OpEd section, borkena has been a single handed effort in the past eight years. The editor has been doing it while maintaining the hassle of a full time job out of sheer commitment for the cause of Ethiopia. We are living a promising chapter in the history of Ethiopia. TPLF was perhaps one of the greatest problems Ethiopia ever faced in its entire history. Worse, the problem that TPLF created will not vanish right away.

And the struggle for Ethiopia is far from over. A considerable part of the struggle happens in the cyber media. We could make borkena relevant in that sense. 

The excuse to block sharing content feature on borkena fan page is “violation of community rules.” We have reached out to Facebook team to seek explanation to no avail. Contents shared on the fan page are usually Ethiopian news related contents. No hate message, no profanity or pornographic contents that cause harm is shared on the fan page. Facebook’s action has apparently affected the page visibility and distribution of contents from borkena.

Sometimes we are allowed to share one news content. Sometimes two contents. At other times not at all allowed sharing contents during twenty-four hours. 

The fan page is set up as a News and publishing media so that it will not be confused with “community page.” Timing matters to share news contents, and it has been frustrating with relentless restrictions from Facebook.  

However, so far, there are no restrictions for readers to share contents directly from borkena page. Until Facebook resolves the issue, we ask support from the borkena audience to share contents from the borkena site directly. That feature is not blocked, and we have activated social sharing features both at top and bottom of posts.