Silenced: Dissidents from Azerbaijan are trolled, insulted, and threatened online – even if they’ve been living in exile for a long time.
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00:00If you are a vocal critic, and this is what you do while still living abroad,
00:04you need these platforms to amplify your message.
00:07And so it becomes this game of cat and mouse.
00:11It's like, what kind of profile do I keep?
00:14Do I stay on one social media for my work
00:18and then I leave other social media for safety reasons?
00:24Azoge Bula relies on social media platforms.
00:27The journalist has been living abroad for many years,
00:30but that hasn't stopped the Azerbaijani government from targeting her.
00:34She receives a lot of hate speech and she's convinced it's state-controlled.
00:39To her, companies like Meta.org are part of the problem.
00:45The companies that operate the social media platforms
00:47have become tools in the hands of these very autocratic governments
00:50that rely on these platforms to target
00:54their dissident and exiled community members.
00:58They create, of course, bot accounts.
01:00They troll these individuals.
01:01We can talk about online harassment.
01:04We can talk about death threats that are being sent online,
01:10which then could also potentially lead to offline measures.
01:13Even though she's living abroad, Azoge doesn't feel safe.
01:16The threats from the regime affect her.
01:19She feels authorities should do more to protect people.
01:22Because in so many case studies that I've read,
01:26and interviews that I've read, and people I've spoken to,
01:30police does not take you seriously.
01:33When you show up at their door and you tell them,
01:37I've received, I don't know, hundreds of messages on my Instagram,
01:42and I don't know what to do.
01:43And they're like, oh, you know, it's just Instagram.
01:45Who cares?