Acromax Media, accused of censoring social media posts that show the government in a critical light, has denied that they work for any political party despite previously admitting that they do to an Exit journalist.
In an official statement sent to Exit this week, they state that Acromax’s “sole owner is Mr Aldor Nini” and that “Acromax Media confirms that it does not provide services for political parties.”
This categorical denial is a stark contrast to the admission made to an Exit journalist in August 2019.
In a conversation that took place over Facebook Messenger between Exit and Nini, Exit asks whether Acromax works “either directly or indirectly for Edi Rama or Erion Veliaj and have ever undertaken any work which included the scope of taking down material, pages, and profiles of people that have been critical of them?”
To this, Nini confirms that the Socialist Party (PS) is a client.
“The only business relationship we have is with the political party PS…”
Nini then continues to list the work that Acromax does for the ruling party which includes blocking unauthorised usage of their copyrighted material such as pictures and videos, working with Facebook to report fake news about members of the PS, and using automated systems which search for “matches”or “fake news” and reports to the applicable platform.
When Exit asked whether the PS make specific requests for Acromax to target certain posts, Nini again confirmed the work they do for the party and even provided a list of articles.
“Probably it would be better to send you a list of all articles we have taken measures against on behalf of the PS…” Nini said.
He then informed Exit his “team” were preparing the list of articles, before stating “This is the full list of links reported on behalf of PS by our company due to copyright infringements or clearly fake news.”
While the list only contained four articles and the allegations against Acromax total many more, this does show that despite their recent denial, PS was indeed a client.
Acromax has been accused by a growing number of journalists and members of civil society of getting images, videos, social media pages, and social media posts blocked and removed because they paint the PS and its members in an unflattering light. Acromax has denied this, saying that they only act on fake news and copyright infringement.
