Tag: Azad Soz

For years, the promise of the digital town square was built on a simple premise: technology would democratize the truth, allowing the voices of the marginalized to bypass the gatekeepers of state-controlled media. Yet, for independent journalists and activists in Azerbaijan or based abroad, this promise has been inverted. Instead of a megaphone, platforms like YouTube and Facebook have increasingly functioned as automated guillotines, where legitimate dissent is silenced not by a state decree but by a “copyright strike.”

This act of censorship is rarely carried out directly by the state. Instead, it is outsourced to a murky ecosystem of pro-government entities and shadowy third-party agencies. These actors exploit the Notice-and-Takedown systems—mechanisms designed for Silicon Valley legal compliance—to flag critical reports as intellectual property violations. Whether it is political commentary or footage of a protest, takedown requests are considered, and content disappears without any checks or balances on the platforms themselves.

The platforms’ complicity lies in their institutional blindness. Driven by a desire for global scale and automated efficiency, tech giants have retreated behind “black box” algorithms that lack any understanding of national nuances. In the eyes of a YouTube content ID system, a claim from a Baku-based media company looks like a standard commercial dispute; in reality, it is often a state-sponsored attempt to wipe an investigative archive off the map. By failing to invest in regional expertise or recognize the specific patterns of “copyright trolling” used by the Aliyev regime, platforms have effectively handed authoritarian states a “delete” button for the truth.

In Azerbaijan, where independent outlets like Abzas Media and Meydan TV already face the physical threat of imprisonment and exile, the loss of a digital platform is more than a technical hurdle—it is a total erasure of the public record. 

Below are just some of the most recent examples that show platforms’ complicity and their lack of understanding of nuances. 

Meydan TV

On December 16, Meydan TV’s Facebook and Instagram pages received a copyright violation by member of parliament Ulvi Guliyev. Despite the team’s submission of counter-strike evidence that the reported content violated no copyright rules, Meta did not change its original decision. Meydan TV’s Instagram page suffered too. The account, which has almost 1 million followers, was suspended over a similar claim. 

Azad Soz

The online channel had several of its videos removed, and it is facing closure with over 800k subscribers. The targeting is based on bogus court orders submitted to YouTube, which the platform has taken into account without considering that the country’s judiciary lacks independence and fails to guarantee a fair trial. 

The channel’s TikTok accounts are also blocked in the country. 

Afgan Mukhtarli

Exiled journalist reported back in October that his TikTok channel was blocked in Azerbaijan. The process was gradual. The journalist said he noticed a drop in views. After research, Mukhtarli learned that his page was blocked in the country. Before this, his TikTok account was closed by the platform itself in September. He appealed, and the account was reinstated. 

Hamam Times

HamamTimes, an online media outlet, has also faced digital targeting. In the last year alone, its pages on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok were subjected to fabricated copyright violation reports, resulting in posts being deleted and pages temporarily shut down.

In April, their Instagram account was suspended for 16 days, while on Facebook, several posts were deleted without any notification.

META explained the reason as a “breach of intellectual property rights.” But failed to provide any further evidence. Only with the intervention of third parties was the platform able to restore access to its account and content. The platform believes it was its coverage of Kapital Bank – one of the biggest banks in Azerbaijan, which belongs to the ruling family – and a serious security breach in the bank’s digital systems, which led thousands of bank customers to fall into the hands of scammers and lose vast sums of funds.

Similarly, META deleted Hamam Times’ posts about Kapital Bank without giving any notification.

All of these experiences have led users of social media platforms to believe there is an on-going working relationship between the authorities and the platforms.