I have to admit that I am baffled by this one. Sky News is reporting this:
Facebook and Instagram posts calling for Vladimir Putin’s death – and violence against Russian soldiers – are going to be temporarily allowed in some countries, according to Reuters.
Meta, which owns both social networks, has reportedly sent emails to moderators that explain the company is making “allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules”.
The encouragement of violence against Russian civilians will continue to be prohibited – and posts calling for the president’s death will be deleted if they contain other targets or discuss a location or method.
Rules have also been relaxed surrounding posts about Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The temporary policy only applies to users in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine, according to the news agency’s report.
And to further go down the rabbit hole, there’s this:
An email seen by Reuters told moderators: “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-defence, etc.)”
Not that I want to defend Putin. But if I put up a post on this blog calling for the death of US President Joe Biden, I am certain that some US law enforcement agency would be on my doorstep looking for me by the end of the day. In other words, while rules cannot be absolute, this doesn’t seem right to me. Even if its application is limited in scope as is the case here. And I have to wonder if this policy will do more harm than good. Because everything that Facebook does does more harm than good.
I guess we’ll see.
In A Significant Escalation, Russia Is Trying To Get Facebook And Instagram Labeled As Extremist
Posted in Commentary with tags Facebook, Russia on March 11, 2022 by itnerdRussian prosecutors have asked a court to ban Meta Platforms’s Facebook and Instagram as “extremist,” Interfax reported, the latest move in a growing crackdown on social networks:
Authorities blocked access to Facebook last week under a new media law, but the “extremist” designation, if approved by a court, would effectively criminalize all of Meta’s operations in Russia. The company’s Instagram app would also be blocked. The move comes amid increasing tension between Moscow and U.S. tech companies. Earlier Friday, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, called on prosecutors to investigate Meta after Reuters reported that the company had temporarily eased internal restrictions on calling for violence against Russian soldiers due to the invasion of Ukraine. Russia has already banned certain social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, while tech companies have demonetized Russian state-sponsored media and blocked them in Europe.
And it looks like this may have already started:
This is a major escalation in Putin’s fight against social networks who have posts that he doesn’t agree with. Though this story from earlier today has me thinking that this may not be all bad. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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