Facebook and Instagram are temporarily relaxing their policies around allowing hate speech and incitement to violence against Russia and its president. To be clear, social media apps don’t do that in the Netherlands, but they do in Ukraine and in many Eastern European countries.
Meta changes policy
The war is raging in Ukraine, but at the same time Western countries are exercising sanctions on Russia. We are also seeing more and more reactions from companies that are ceasing their commercial activities in Russia. Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, previously stopped selling ads in Russia, and now the company is responding in a different way.
In an email that Reuters Meta describes how it is relaxing its policies on Instagram and Facebook regarding hateful content and calls to violence in a number of countries, including Ukraine.
Hate and calls to violence
It is now legal in those countries to wish death on Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. That is allowed if no other individuals are mentioned in a message. In addition, they can also wish Russian soldiers dead as long as they do not target specific individuals. “We still do not allow credible messages calling for violence against Russian civilians,” Meta clarified in the email.
That is Meta’s policy of inciting violence. As far as general hateful messages are concerned, it is allowed to write about “the Russians” in a general sense. At least if it is done in a context where it is clearly about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.
Russia rejects the decision
According to Meta, the new policies are temporary and will come into effect in the following countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine. Russia has already rejected Meta’s decision, stating that it is not for such platforms to take a position in a conflict between countries.
Many western companies have since withdrawn from Russia. Apple and Google, among others, have already taken steps and Samsung also stopped selling phones and chips in that country. At the same time, Russia already demanded that Google remove content about the military actions in Ukraine from YouTube.
Image: “Vladimir Putin – World Economic Forum Annual Meeting Davos 2009” by World Economic Forum, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0†
– Thanks for information from Androidworld. Source