Facebook’s parent company, Meta, confirmed on Thursday that it would temporarily allow users to post posts calling for violence against “Russian invaders.” This change is an update to the company’s hate speech policy, which prohibits users from posting violent posts.
“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have temporarily granted forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, such as violent speech, such as ‘death to Russian invaders’. We will not yet allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians, “a Meta spokesman said in a statement to CBS News.
The policy update will allow violent publications that refer to the Ukrainian war and are aimed at the Russian government and army. It intends to give Ukrainians the opportunity to defend their country on social media.
The development was first reported by Reuters.
Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia began, Meta and the Russian authorities have been at odds. Late last month, Meta said it would refuse to comply with orders from Russian authorities to stop fact-checking publications on the platform of Russian state media organizations.
As a result, Meta said Russia had begun limiting its services to the country.
Meta also overthrew coordinated operation of Russian influence which was addressed to Ukrainians on Facebook and Instagram in late February. The company said the disinformation campaign had links to another Russian network in the Donbas region that had previously been banned from Facebook in April 2020.
At the same time, Meta also said he had discovered and banned a group of Belarusian-linked hackers trying to compromise the accounts of influential Ukrainians, including journalists and senior military officials.
New policy change allowing users to write posts calling for violence against Russian invaders comes less than a week after Russia blocked access to Facebook and other social networking platforms, including Twitter. However, users in Russia can access Instagram and WhatsApp, which are also owned by Meta.
Meta said last week that it was working to keep its services available in Russia “to the fullest extent possible” and announced that it would pause ads aimed at people in Russia. Advertisers in Russia are also not allowed to create or run ads anywhere in the world, including Russia.
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