Meta Platforms is to allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the Ukraine invasion, internal e-mails showed, in a temporary change to its hate speech policy.
The social media company is also temporarily allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, internal e-mails to its content moderators showed.
“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.
Photo: Reuters
The calls for the leaders’ deaths would be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method, one e-mail said, in a change to the company’s rules on violence and incitement.
Russia’s embassy in the US demanded that Washington stop the “extremist activities” of Meta.
“Users of Facebook & Instagram did not give the owners of these platforms the right to determine the criteria of truth and pit nations against each other,” the embassy wrote on Twitter in a message that was also shared by their India office.
The temporary policy changes on calls for violence to Russian soldiers apply to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine, one e-mail showed.
In an e-mail sent to moderators, Meta highlighted a change in its hate speech policy pertaining to Russian soldiers and to Russians in the context of the invasion.
“We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it’s clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.),” it said in the e-mail.
“We are doing this because we have observed that in this specific context, ‘Russian soldiers’ is being used as a proxy for the Russian military. The Hate Speech policy continues to prohibit attacks on Russians,” the e-mail added.
Last week, Russia said it was banning Facebook in response to what it said were restrictions of access to Russian media on the platform.
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