In a rare exception amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Meta is allowing posts with violent speech toward Russian soldiers on Facebook and Instagram in specific countries, including calls for harm or even death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
As per The Verge, according to internal emails sent to Meta moderators, the company said such posts with violent speech will be allowed as long as they don’t contain threats toward others or “indicators of credibility” like saying where or how the act will take place.
Facebook and Instagram have instituted a temporary change in policy that allows users in some countries to post content that’s usually forbidden.
“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’. We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” a Meta spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report late on Thursday.
The New York Times said this temporary policy applies to people using the service from Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania.
According to Vice, Facebook moderators received similar temporary instructions about “death to Khamanei” content and “cited a spokesperson saying that Facebook had made that particular exception in certain earlier cases as well”.
The Facebook community standards regarding hate speech and violence and incitement have continued to receive updates since the company started publishing them publicly in 2018.
