Although hate speech is something punished by social networks, everything seems to indicate that in the context of the war that the Ukrainian people are suffering, it will make Meta rethink the policies of its platform. And it is that both on Facebook and Instagram Messages of violence and hatred towards Russian soldiers and the Putin government will be allowedas long as they are published in relation to the current armed conflict.
This Meta movement comes after the partial limitation of the use of this social network by the Putin government, after the attempt to censor this platform to silence some of the country’s media. In this way, and in order to support the Ukrainian people, the platform has made a partial and temporary modification of its policies to allow hate speech towards Russia.
“Death to the president”, and other messages that suppose a parenthesis in the policies of use of Meta
As confirmed by Reuters, the social network is also temporarily allowing death threats President Putin and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko.
Meta has responded to our Xataka colleagues, confirming the following:
“In light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, we made a temporary exception for those affected by the war, to express sentiments towards the invading armed forces as ‘death to the Russian invaders’. These are temporary measures designed to preserve the voice and the expression of people facing an invasion. As always, we are prohibiting calls for violence against Russians outside the narrow context of the current invasion.”
From the company they repeatedly insist on this context of war between Russia and Ukraine. In fact, in the case of the hate messages towards the political leaders of Russia and Belarus, they have mentioned that will be allowed as long as no other objectives are taken into account or two credibility indicators are expressedsuch as location and method used.
These policy changes affect a limited number of countries. The list consists of the countries of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Slovakia, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ukraine. This means that anyone who is in a country other than those mentioned, the changes will not affect them.
Social networks are assuming a very powerful tool in this warlike conflict, taking part in the information that is known about the war, and even in the proliferation of hoaxes and propaganda. Once again, this is an example of a double-edged sword that you have to pay close attention to when using it.
The e-mails issued by the company and that Reuters has also collected refer to the permission to praise the Azov Battalion, a neo-Nazi paramilitary movement that was accused in 2016 of committing rape and torture against pro-Russian civilians in Donbass, and in 2019 was added by Facebook to its registry of Dangerous Organizations and Individuals, along with the Islamic State and the Ku Kux Klan. Praise the Azov regiment will be allowed “strictly in the context of the defense of Ukraine”.