“Pershiy Zhytomyrsky” learns why they were unable to share their content on Facebook

"Pershiy Zhytomyrsky" editors learned that their website has been hacked and infested with malware in autumn, which resulted in problems with sharing their content on Facebook.

The media outlet's journalist Kostyantyn Kasyan reported this to the IMI representative in the Zhytomyr oblast.

Back in September, Facebook started taking down posts with links to the website. Users who have ever shared articles from it started receiving notifications about spam in their content. You get the same notification if you try to post a link to the website on your page.

Photos – screenshots from Facebook

Meanwhile, the website's team was tackling the problem and did not comment on it, but in December they confirmed that they had been hacked.

"Yes, our website was hacked and malware was inserted into the code, which relinked to various spam. Our experts identified the problem and fixed it. We have cleared the website of all malware and stabilized its work. Unfortunately, there have been problems with sharing links on Facebook. Such restrictions started to arise due to content that, according to the technical support, contained news about the war, which violates the community guidelines and falls under their definition of 'controversial content,'" Kostyantyn Kasyan said.

Photo – a screenshot from Facebook

He said that posting links to the website on Facebook is currently impossible, which resulted in a drop of the website's traffic. However, journalists have started to posting adapted news articles, photos and videos on the media outlet's Facebook page, and the reach has been growing because of this.

The editors did not contact the police regarding the incident and do not know who is behind the interfering with the website.

"We did not contact the police. Apart from relinks to spam sites, no other damage was done to the website. Our specialists explained that this could have been done by anyone with an interest in the large traffic from our readers, which enabled them to relink to spam advertising," Kostyantyn Kasyan said.