Facebook’s parent company said it wouldn’t allow users to post calls for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s death.
Meta noted the update to its policies amid controversy around the company’s decision to allow Ukrainians to post about fighting and attacking Russia’s invading forces.
The guidelines said Meta will not allow users to share a post that “calls for the death of a head of state,” according to internal emails viewed by Bloomberg on Sunday.
Facebook’s temporary modifications to its content moderation policies were announced on Tuesday through internal emails. The company said it would allow users to call for violence against Russian armed forces on Facebook and Instagram.
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“I want to be crystal clear: our policies are focused on protecting people’s rights to free speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country,” said Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, in a statement. “This fact is, if we applied our standard content policies without adjustments we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which would rightly be viewed as unacceptable.”
Clegg said this policy only applies to Ukraine and that the company has “no quarrel with the Russian people.” He also said that the company’s policies on hate speech relating to the Russian people would not change and that Meta would not tolerate “Russophobia.” This decision drew ire from Russian authorities.
Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office announced on Friday that it had filed a petition “to recognize Meta Platforms Inc. as an extremist organization and ban its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation,” according to the Russian news agency Interfax.
The head of the Duma’s Committee on Information Policy, Alexander Khinshtein, also announced plans to ban Instagram.
“My opinion is that the work of Instagram in Russia, in this case, should be blocked, like what’s happened to Facebook,” Khinshtein told TASS.
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Technology companies have become increasingly supportive of Ukraine, taking actions such as removing posts by Russian-controlled accounts alleging that the bombing of civilians was fake, automatically deleting “misinformation,” and suspending TikTok livestreams in Russia. Russia blocked access to several Big Tech platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, in response.
