Russian colorist receives multiple suspensions from Facebook and Instagram for sharing "dangerous" images

Olga Shirnina, also known as Klimbim, is one of the leading colorization artists who gives new life to historic images. However, her work has been banned from Facebook and Instagram several times now. Since September last year, her accounts have been suspended multiple times for posting images that depict “dangerous organizations.”

Although Shirnina is well-known for her colorization work, she is not a photographer. She is a professional a German-Russian translator, but she is passionate about history and enjoys colorizing historic photos “purely for pleasure.” If you visit her Instagram or Facebook page, you will see that she only shares photos with short description and credits, without any comments or sharing any political opinions.

Partisans | Партизаны

Posted by Klimbim on Sunday, May 17, 2020

As Shirnina told RFE/RL, her Instagram account first got suspended in September 2019. She shared a colorized image of senior Nazi leaders, and it was flagged for “violating community guidelines.” The notification from Instagram warned her that her account could be deleted if she posted similar content in the future.

According to the same source, Shirnina got suspended a few more times over the following months, both from Facebook and Instagram. It culminated when she posted Evgenei Khaldei’s photo of Soviet soldiers raising their flag above the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945. This time, she earned an account suspension that would last “three days,” as Facebook notified her. However, as I can conclude from her post, it took more than three days to get her account unlocked. RFE/RL writes that her account was unlocked only after she posted a scan of her driver’s license so Facebook could confirm her identity.

Меня только сегодня разблокировали, хотя обещали бан всего на три дня.

Posted by Klimbim on Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Community Standards on Dangerous Individuals and Organizations read as follows:

Shirnina told RFE/RL that she was “puzzled” by “the apparent inconsistency of Facebook’s changing rules.” She can’t figure out which images would have her earn a permanent ban from the platform, considering that Facebook really isn’t consistent with its rules. After all, we’ve seen a couple of weird examples before. “I work with real historical photos and they can’t be corrected,” she concluded.

[via Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty]

Tj Ó Seamállaigh

Creative people should really consider going out of instagram and facebook

and whenever a platform is to be purchased by fb, run away from that too
Cristiano Diniz da Silva

This is part of the algorithm. The computer was trained to identify a pattern and the images fall under that. The best path is to understand what is missing to break the pattern and then it would be good. It is unfortunate truly. That was a beautiful work to see.
- DHFabian
  
  This is correct. It’s (obviously) a highly flawed system that leaves people shaking their heads over some of the things that get banned.
Don Navarro

Dump is dangerous and he is thriving 🤔
g_disqus

Do you know why this is published on Facebook, and not on the Russian VK social network? The Russian social network sends user data to the police due to publications. In Russia, the image of the swastika is forbidden, criminal punishment is relied on for this. Yes, even if these are historical photographs, book covers, etc. Therefore, Facebook is quite good, and she publishes there.