Facebook and Instagram parent company, Meta, will temporarily allow posts calling for violence against Russian invaders in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, according to Reuters.
Internal emails to content moderators – as seen by Reuters – suggest Meta will temporarily relax its stance on posts which would typically violate their hate speech policy, so long as it is related to the ongoing conflict in Eastern Europe, and so long as it targets Russian military, and not Russian citizens.
“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.),” reads one email.
“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.”
Posts which advocate the deaths of Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and Belorusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, will also be permitted. However, further emails suggest these posts will only be allowed so long as they don’t appear credible or calculated (i.e. time, location, method).
In a recent statement, Meta said, “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.”
Such changes will only be permitted in nations geographically connected to, or affected by the conflict, including Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
These changes are another chapter in the virtual tug-of-war being played out between The Kremlin and global social media and tech giants.
Last week, Russia announced it had banned both Facebook and Twitter in response to growing restrictions being placed on the warring nation following its invasion of neighbouring Ukraine.
The social media restrictions included Meta banning Russian state-owned outlets RT News, RIA, and Sputnik from its Facebook and Instagram platforms in the European Union.
Microsoft and Google also joined the movement, banning the same news outlets from their app stores. The latter even disabled its Google Maps live traffic feature to protect Ukrainian citizens.
