• In early April 2022, after the Ukrainian army entered the occupied city of Bucha, near Kyiv, many photos and videos documented the horrific crimes committed by the Russians. Ukrainian users, followed by the international media, began sharing these materials to talk about the crimes of the Russian army.
• On April 3-4, 2022, users started noticing that the hashtags #Bucha and #BuchaMassacre were blocked on Facebook and Instagram, even though these photos and videos had become one of the top news stories of all the world’s media and speeches of world politicians. The media has written articles with headlines about the BuchaMassacre, and an article about it appeared on the English-language Wikipedia.
• These platforms even started to hide the international call for help to Ukraine: StandWithUkraine.

• It is clear that the hashtags were blocked due to regular complaints. Facebook’s first line of moderation is algorithms that respond to mass complaints (i.e. from Russian supporters). But at some point, content analysts definitely get involved.
• Facebook has repeatedly stated (including in comments for AIN.Capital) that the Ukrainian segment of the social media is not moderated by Russians or the Russian office but by people familiar with the Ukrainian context. So there is a big question: Who exactly at Facebook decided to hide the hashtags that help the whole world learn about the crimes of the Russian army?

Context

• The fact is that war posts about the Russian invaders are now the key reason why Ukrainian accounts can be banned. And, as AIN.Capital knows, some banned posts did not even violate Facebook policy — it could simply contain criticism of the Russian regime or a report on the disastrous consequences of Russia’s military aggression.
• So, activists that help to unban Ukrainian accounts often urge users to be more careful when writing public posts because Facebook is strictly against hate speech and violence. Until now, content analysts of the social media company did not consider the context of such posts.

What has changed?

Facebook and Instagram have temporarily changed their hate speech policy, allowing aggressive expressions like ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ But the company still does not allow aggression toward Russian civilians (apparently, from Facebook’s point of view, only the Russian army can express aggression toward civilians). It is also allowed to call for the death of Russia’s leaders if the post does not contain other targets or specific means (location or method).

What specifically is allowed:

• hate speech targeting Russian soldiers (except war prisoners)
• hate speech targeting Russians where it is clear that the context is Russia’s war in Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.)
• call for death to Putin

The press service of Meta confirmed the change of rules to the editor of AIN.Capital:

“In light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, we made a temporary exception for those affected by war, to express sentiments toward invading armed forces such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ These are temporary measures designed to preserve voice and expression for people who are facing invasion. As always, we are prohibiting calls for violence against Russians outside of the narrow context of the current invasion”

• As Instagram says, the new feature is “a new tool to discover and support small businesses.” It will show popular locations tagged by users. Among them are parks, restaurants, supermarkets, as well as other places mentioned on Instagram.
• You can open Map Search by clicking the new icon in the Explore section in the upper right corner. Also, you can use the in-feature search button to look for specific hashtags, for example, #takeaway.

• Currently, the new feature is running in test mode in Australia and New Zealand. According to Lifehacker Australia, Instagram plans to roll out the new feature to users in other parts of the world; however, the exact deadline is not yet known.
• Interestingly, a similar map search feature was previously integrated by Snapchat. It works on the same principle and helps users to find popular places. Snap Inc. said that 250 million people would use Snap Map in the second quarter of 2021.

How to temporarily disable your account

You can delete an Instagram profile only in the web version or via your phone browser.

1. To temporarily disable your account, open the profile page in the browser and click Edit profile.
2. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and select Temporarily disable my account.
3. Instagram will ask you to indicate the reason for disabling your account – please select from the drop-down list and confirm the action by entering a password.

The temporarily deleted profile will be hidden from other users. To reactivate the page, you need to log in again using the Instagram app or web version. Please note that you can disable an account no more than once a week.

How to permanently delete an Instagram account

It’s a bit more complicated to delete the page permanently. You can go to the Deletion page by clicking this link or using the following instructions:

Using your phone:

1. On the Instagram app, go to the Settings menu and click Help.
2. Go to the Help Center and click Manage Your Account (or type ‘Delete Account’ in the search bar).
3. Select Delete Your Account and open the ‘How do I delete my Instagram account?’ tab.
4. Instagram will prompt you to go to the deletion page in the ‘To request the permanent deletion of your account‘ instruction block.
5. Indicate the reason for deleting your account by selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down list and clicking Finish.
6. Confirm the action by entering your password.
7. Your Instagram account has been deleted.

Through the web version:

1. On the Instagram.com website, in the lower horizontal menu click Help.
2. In the Help Center menu, go to Manage Your Account and then click Delete Your Account.
3. Instagram will prompt you to go to the deletion page in the ‘To request the permanent deletion of your account‘ instruction block.
4. Indicate the reason for deleting your account by selecting the appropriate option from the drop-down list and clicking the finish button.
5. Confirm the action by entering your password.
6. Your Instagram account has been deleted.

It should be noted that after you have confirmed the deletion of the page, the profile will still be visible on Instagram for another month. Thus, the data can be restored by re-logging into the system. To do this, just enter the profile name and password. If you do not do it within a month, your account will be automatically permanently deleted.

In 2021, Instagram announced that it was taking the LIKE hiding experiment to a global level. AIN.UA noticed the option in its personal Instagram profile and shared how to hide the likes counter. Read more about this in our article.

How to hide Like counts on Instagram

In a nutshell:

• Select the photo where you want to hide the likes
• Click on the triple dot icon at the top of the photo
• Tap “Hide like count”
• If it is a video, the user hides not only the number of likes but also the number of views

Details

Users have two new options: to hide the number of likes on personal photos and disable the counter on the posts of other users. It’s noteworthy that the user can’t hide all the likes on personal photos at once – they can enable the feature in the settings of each image. Here’s how to do it:

• Open your Instafram prifile
• Click on the photo where you want to hide likes
• Click the triple dot icon at the top of the photo
• Tap “Hide like count”

You can also hide the counter while posting a photo. To do this, go to “Settings” and enable the option “Hide Like and View Counts.”

Besides, you can hide the number of likes of other users in Instagram settings. In this case, the user won’t be able to see the number of likes, while the feed will still be generated based on potentially interesting posts for a particular person.

• Go to Settings and select Privacy
• Click on Posts
• Enable the option “Hide Like and View Counts”

Why it’s interesting

Facebook, which owns Instagram, says the feature of hiding the likes will help focus users on the content rather than studying its popularity. For this reason, the company is actively working on its implementation, particularly on Facebook. The preliminary testing showed that not all users need such a feature – for example, some of them use data to determine the popularity or relevance of their content. Therefore the company decided to provide some variants of settings.

It is also interesting that Instagram has not announced the official launch of this feature. In April 2021, it became known only about the start of global testing. Users who received access to this option were promised to send a notification, but our journalist has not received any notifications.

How it works

The service analyzes 32 indicators from the moment when a page was created: the number of posts, friends` activity, the ratio of followers to active page visitors, and other qualitative and quantitative engagement metrics. The result is calculated individually based on 100% performance capabilities, and the user is ranked from 1 to 100.

If the score is less than 60, it is early days to talk about influence. Obtained 90 points shows that a person has all chances to become an ambassador of a well-known brand.

The project aims to show that everyone has influence and can monetize their social media. The company explains: “It is not necessary to have a million followers to get a high ranking. It is enough to be active in a social media and make interesting content which readers like.”

How can you find out your ranking

Follow the link and log in to your account. In a few seconds, the algorithm will calculate all the indicators and give you the result.

Here you can also see your level of activity in social media over the past 30 days.

Besides obtaining the statistics, the user can see the ranking of friends and which place among them they occupy.

About the Project

Myscore was created as part of the Publicfast influence marketing platform and was launched in 2014. Back then, only Facebook was taken for calculation of scores with only a couple of parameters: the number of friends and followers, likes, comments, and reposts, together with the number of publications done over the last 30 days.

Therefore, the platform was closed for updating and later relaunched after advancement of the following indicators: the AI was improved, the number of analyzed indicators was increased (there are now 32 of them) and Instagram was added.

Dynamics of growth of audiences of social media:

The Ukrainian Facebook ad-reachable audience now totals 22 million.

Ukrainian users are googling Facebook less and less, but the authors of the research attribute this to the fact that most already have the application:

The compilers of the research report that over the past six months, the number of Facebook-users has decreased in six regional centers, but social media continues to grow in smaller cities.

Facebook is more popular than Instagram in almost all regions.

The highest Instagram penetration is in Kyiv region (51%), Odesa region (42%) and Dnipropetrovsk region (41%). The lowest – in Kirovohrad region (25%):

Instagram is ahead of Facebook among Ukrainian users of 29 years old and younger.

Among the 18-23 age group, the penetration rate can be higher than 100% (because young users may have several accounts).

Femail users continue to make the most of Facebook’s Ukrainian audience.

Most Ukrainian users visit Facebook via their mobile phones. Only 600,000 users access the social media from desktops, and 11.55 million only via mobile devices (and this number is up slightly compared to last July).

How it works

• The application is available for download on iOS and Android.
• To forecast the future, click ‘Try’ and upload a photo.
• After analysis, you can save the photo to a gallery and publish it to social media.
• The application is chargeable. The monthly access charge will be $20. However, the user can try the app for free during a 3-day trial period.

Ukrainian roots

The cofounders of Gradient are Ukrainian Vladislav Urazov and Russian Bogdan Matveev. Previously, they worked together on the Teleport project, a viral photo editor for hair dyeing.

In 2017, Snap acquired the app for $8 million, and their partners incorporated a new company, Ticket to the Moon, Inc. with registration in the U.S. state of Delaware. There, Urazov is a chief executive officer, and Matveev is a chief technical officer.

Ethnicity estimate mask

Ethnicity estimate mask for Instagram by Gradient is a fresh example of the company’s viral content. The essence of the new mask is that the users allegedly pass a virtual DNA test, which determines their ethnicity. The mask is available in the application, you can download it for iOS and Android. After the test, a photo with results can be saved to the gallery or published on social media.

Who’s your twin

Who’s your twin mask is the first huge viral success story of Gradient. Back in 2019, a startup created a feature that allowed users to find their celebrity lookalikes: for that, you just had to upload your photo and in a few seconds the application would show Who’s your twin. The mask immediately gained immense popularity, and the corresponding pictures appeared in all social media.

Gradient

One of the founders of Gradient is Ukrainian Vladislav Urazov. Before that, Urazov worked in the founding team of the Teleport application. The application allows you to ‘try on’ various impressions on your selfie. Teleport became viral, it had enormous outreach and spread widely around the world. And in 2017, in the wake of success, Snap acquired it for US$ 8 million. Bogdan Matveev, who was CTO at Teleport, became Vladislav’s new Gradient partner. They are developing the project together.

The company almost immediately was fine-tuned to create viral masks and mechanics like ethnicity estimate mask, which allowed it to quickly gain an audience. A week after the release in September 2019, it had 2 million downloads in the App Store and 1 million downloads in the Google Play Market.

According to the Gradient team, the company creates all the masks with the help of artificial intelligence. Also, as Urazov assures, the team does not collect any user data: the application, according to him, is completely safe.

The application is available for download on iOS and Android. To find out “your historical roots,” click “Try” and upload a photo. After analyzing it, you can save it to a gallery and publish it to social networks.

This is not Gradient’s first viral success. In September 2019, the app got into the App Store top in Ukraine in two days, and in October, it reached the first place in the USA thanks to the function “Which celebrity do you look like?”

Ukrainian roots

The cofounders of Gradient are Ukrainian Vladislav Urazov and Russian Bogdan Matveev. Previously, they worked together on the Teleport project, a viral photo editor for hair dyeing. In 2017, Snap acquired the app for $8 million.

And their partners incorporated a new company – Ticket to the Moon, Inc. with registration in the U.S. state of Delaware. There, Urazov is a chief executive officer and Matveev is a chief technical officer. The VC.RU profile reports that in 2019, the company had about 15 developers from Moscow and Odessa.

Size of the Ukrainian audience

In 2019, there were two significant changes in the size of the audience of Facebook and Instagram in the Ukrainian segment. After the number of users of both platforms peaked in February 2019, Facebook administration has massively deleted fake accounts. Then the number of users of Ukrainian Facebook decreased from 13 to 12 million, and Instagram – from 11 to 10.

However, as of September, the size of the audience had recovered.

• According to the agency, as of September 2019, the Ukrainian Facebook audience was 0.7% of the global audience. By the number of users, Ukraine was ranked 33^rd globally and 8^th in Europe.
• The Ukrainian audience is larger than the Russian audience (0.4% of the global audience), ranking only 42^nd in the world.
• Facebook penetration in Ukraine is 31%, which is lower than in EU countries (for comparison in the Czech Republic – 47%, France – 46%).
• As for Instagram – Ukraine is in the lead (26%), but is second to Russia (28%) and Turkey (48%).
• The key factor that determines the popularity of Facebook in Ukraine is the ban on Russian social networks. Without this step, the picture could be similar to the indicators of neighboring Belarus, which almost repeat the proportions of Russia (Facebook is used only by 6-7% of the population, Instagram – 26-28%).

Activity of Ukrainian users

Ukrainians became significantly more active users of Facebook during the first half of 2019. So, as of September 2019, on average, during one month, one user shared 2 posts, left 3 comments, and gave 17 likes. These indicators are higher than the world average.

Particular attention draws the high level of interaction of Ukrainians with advertising posts. In the span of half a year, they began clicking on them one and a half times more (18 in September against 13 at the beginning of the year). Here, the Ukrainian audience is also well ahead of the world (an average of 12 clicks).

Instagram for youth, Facebook for adults

Instagram is incredibly popular with young people – 99% of Ukrainians aged 18-24 have their profiles here. Every second (56%) citizen aged 25-35 are registered on Instagram and only a quarter (27%) of those aged 36-45.

The Ukrainian segment of Facebook is dominated by the female audience with over 61% or 7.6 million users. There are 4.9 million registered males, which is approximately 39%. The age of the majority of men and women registered is between 29 and 35.

Migration into mobile

Over the course of 2019, there has been an increasing trend among Facebook users to switch to mobile devices. More than 12.3 million users are already using this social network on their smartphones or tablet.

Eva.stories is an Instagram series filmed in today’s popular stories format. The series shows the life of a 13-year-old Jewish girl Eva Heiman during the Holocaust. The story itself is based on a true story, and the source for information was the diary of a girl who, at the beginning of 1944, described the persecution of Jews in Hungary.

The media project was created in honor of the Holocaust Remembrance Day in Israel. The goal of the campaign is to attract the attention of young Israelis to the tragedy of the people. The promo of the series was accompanied by the signature: “What If a Girl In The Holocaust Had Instagram?”. Therefore, there were used gifs, signatures, filters, geolocation, and hashtags in the videos.

How the diary series work

The series consists of 70 episodes, they are consistently published on May 1 and 2. They are also available in saved account stories. All episodes are combined according to the days of recording in Eva’s real diary: from February 13 to May 30.

The plot of the series reflects the entries in Eva’s diary. In the first Stories, the girl talks about herself and her family. Then the Nazis come, they start persecuting the Jews, kill them or send them to the ghetto. As a result, the girl is taken to a concentration camp.

Shooting in Ukraine

The series was filmed by Ukrainian production Colorfilm. In total, 400 people participated in the shooting, 50 of them were Ukrainians. According to Colorfilm founder Yana Kartun, Lviv was chosen immediately as a location for filming Hungary in military times.

“The line producer of the project from the Israeli side often worked with us in Ukraine. As soon as he was offered this project, he thought of us as a company that would prepare and conduct the shooting, ” she says.

There was little time to prepare for the shooting – less than a month. At the first stage, Colorfilm, together with the Israeli POV studio and a team of directors, producers, and historical consultants, went to Lviv to look for locations. At the second stage, a film crew was formed in Kyiv, some of the actors were looking for, they selected scenery, props and stage costumes. The shooting itself lasted from March 17 to 26 in several locations: Eva’s apartment, pharmacy, school, ghetto, train station, park, and others.

“Locations were compared with photos of military times. I had to hide modern Ukrainian signs, air conditioners on the facades,” continues Kartun.

“I needed to make Lviv look like a Hungarian city occupied by the Germans,” adds project designer Volodymyr Cheremis. “At first we wanted to shoot individual episodes as Stories, but then we decided to make a full-fledged film.”

According to Volodymyr, the most difficult part of the shooting was to deliver the “Tiger” to Lviv from Vinnytsya – a real tank from the Second World War.

How much did it cost

The publication of the New York Times writes that the project budget was “less than $5 million.”