California, Europe Brief News – Facebook owner Meta Platforms announced on Friday that they are making some changes to their Calls For Violence and Hate speech policy to support people of Ukraine against the Russian Invasion.
Russian Prosecutors demand the court to label the US tech giant as an ‘extremist organisation’. On the other hand, the Russian communications regulator said they will ban Meta’s Instagram services in the country from March 14.
Russian Response on Meta’s Call For Violence
Russia’s Investigative Committee said, “A criminal case has been initiated in connection with illegal calls for murder and violence against citizens of the Russian Federation by employees of the American company Meta, which owns social media networks Facebook and Instagram”.
The Investigative Committee is subject to report directly to President Putin. It was not immediately clear what the consequences of the criminal case can be.
Nick Clegg, Meta Global Affairs President responded to the Russian government’s action with a tweet saying that the company is focusing on securing rights to speech as an expression of self-defence and the policy is only applicable in Ukraine.
Clegg tweeted “If we applied our standard content policies without any adjustments we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainainas expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which would rightly be viewed as unacceptable”.
He further added, “ We have no quarrel with the Russian people. There is no change at all in our policies on hate speech as far as the Russian people are concerned”.
The temporary policy changes on call for violence to Russian forces apply to Azerbaijan, Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, Russia, Romania, Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and Armenia.
Information Wars
For the last couple of years, the Russian Government has been putting in reasonable efforts to limit the influence of US tech giants including Facebook and Twitter after repeatedly fining them for allowing content deemed illegal in the Russian rule book.
The Investigative Committee said the Facebook move could violate articles of the Russian Criminal law against public calls for extremist activities.
The state prosecutor’s office said, “ Such actions of the Meta company’s management not only form an idea that terrorist activity is permissible, but are aimed at inciting hatred and enmity towards the citizen of Russia”.
The prosecutor’s office has applied for the court to label meta as an extremist organisation and ban its services in Russia.
