Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, announced an easing of hate speech rules during the war in Ukraine. The temporary change will allow users from some countries that were in the orbit of the former Soviet Union to ask for violence or the death of Russian soldiers.
The company will also release publications calling for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarus dictator Alexandr Lukachenko. No deadline was given for the measures, anticipated by Reuters, to stop taking effect.
According to one of the internal emails that communicated the change, to which the news agency had access, the countries in which this exception will apply are Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania and Slovakia — in addition to those involved. directly in the conflict, Russia and Ukraine.
“As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have made temporary concessions to forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules such as violent speech, such as ‘death to Russian invaders’. Still, we will not allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.” , a company spokesman said in a statement.
The publication calling for the death of the leaders, therefore, will not be allowed if it contains other targets or at least two indicators that the threat is real, such as location and method, according to Meta’s internal messages. Regarding soldiers, posts calling for violence against prisoners of war or outside the context of the invasion remain prohibited under the terms of social media moderation.
“We are doing this because we have observed that, in this specific context, ‘Russian soldier’ is being used as a stand-in for the Russian army. The hate speech policy continues to prohibit attacks on [cidadãos] Russians,” reads one of the emails.
Earlier on Thursday (10), Facebook and Twitter removed posts from the Russian Embassy in the United Kingdom that denied the attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol, in southern Ukraine.
Last week, Russia instituted censorship of war coverage and blocked access to social media after days of limited access. TikTok also suspended publication of video content after the censorship law.
