First, Facebook removed Norwegian party Konservativt’s county branch in Finnmark. Then they deleted its candidate Simon Friis Larsen’s page. The county chapters in Akershus and Telemark have also had their pages removed.

Norwegians head to the polls later this year. That’s why Facebook’s move to block the relatively new political party Konservativt from its platform raises eyebrows.

– Akershus Conservative’s FB has been suspended. This is pure persecution and censorship. First, they took down [parliamentary candidate, county leader and municipal politician] Simon’s [Friis-Larsen] page, which had 6,500 followers. Now they’ve taken down the party’s county page, which he manages, wrote Truls Olufsen-Mehus in a post on Friday.

Olufsen-Mehus is a parliamentary candidate for the Conservative Party in Norway’s Finnmark and Rogaland counties. He also has his own Facebook page with 17,000 followers, which has so far survived the censorship measures.

But the politician fears that it could be taken down next.

– It’s probably only a matter of time before my own page is taken down. I’ve received several notifications already, so it’s living on borrowed time.

Olufsen-Mehus believes that Meta must step up and clean up the mess and that the matter must be taken seriously by the media.

– This is election interference, censorship and persecution of the Conservative Party, he writes.

Simon Friis Larsen has had to start over and build a new page from scratch. Anita Amalie Foss reports that Konservativt i Telemark, just like Finnmark, was shut down some time ago. They have now created a new page.

After pressure on Meta, the Akershus page was restored early on Friday afternoon. Mass reporting is a likely reason for Facebook shutting down the pages, but when they don’t reopen them after further review, it suggests that the censorship is deliberate.

– Simon and Finnmark’s pages are still down, Olufsen-Mehus writes. He believes that Facebook’s practice is the opposite of freedom of expression.

– It is crucial that Facebook is available without restrictions for us. Especially because we don’t get column space in secular media. In Rogaland, where I’m a parliamentary candidate, the newspapers don’t even accept my letters to the editor, says Olufsen-Mehus to media outlet Verdinytt.

– We depend on social media to reach our constituencies. If we are censored there, we are completely out of the election campaign, he says.

Friis Larsen points out that Akershus Konservativt chapter has more followers than Akershus Høyre, the traditional conservative party of Norway which was founded in 1884. Konservativt was founded in 2011 as «Partiet De Kristne» (The Christian Party) before changing names in 2022.

– It’s clear that having these pages closed for good, or on and off, will set us back in terms of exposure, Friis Larsen says to Verdinytt.