Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will allow users on its platforms of Facebook and Instagram in some Eastern European countries to call for violence against Russians and the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
According to internal emails to Meta’s content moderators viewed by Reuters, there would be a temporary change to the hate speech policy allowed in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia itself.
Anyone on Facebook and Instagram can call for the deaths of Russian soldiers if the post is discussing the conflict in Ukraine.
There will be some limitations on the posts, Reuters revealed. Calls for violence against Russians would not be permitted on Meta platforms if they are prisoners of war, and posts calling for the death of Putin and Lukashenko would be taken down if there were two indicators that the threat was credible, or if other targets were contained in the posts.
“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,'” a spokesperson for Meta later clarified. “We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”
This is not the only change that Meta has undertaken recently in relation to the Russian-Ukraine conflict.
Previously, praise for the Azov Battalion, a Neo-Nazi paramilitary organisation that is now under the command of the Ukrainian military, was a bannable offence, as Meta had judged the group to be a dangerous group, but is now permitted.
Meta was “for the time being, making a narrow exception for praise of the Azov Regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard,” spokesman Joe Osborne previously said. Meta has not yet made a public comment on the recent revelations.
Since the so-called “special military operation” began in the Ukraine, Facebook, Twitter, and other Big Tech sites, have been censored by the Russian government, in what was seemingly a response to the restriction of state media outlets RT and Sputnik on the platforms.
This article has been updated to reflect a statement from Meta.
