Russia on Friday opened a criminal case against Meta Platforms FB.O, the company that controls Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, and started to designate the company as an “extremist organization”. The action was opened after the social network announced that it 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.
“A criminal case has been initiated in connection with unlawful requests for murder and violence against citizens of the Russian Federation by employees of the American company Meta, which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram,” said the Russian Investigative Committee.
The committee reports directly to President Vladimir Putin. It is still unclear what the consequences of the criminal case could be. Meta did not respond to requests for comment.
On Thursday, two weeks after the start of the war, a company spokesperson said the company had relaxed its rules of political speech, allowing posts such as “death to Russian invaders”, although it does not allow calls for violence against Russian civilians. Meta said the temporary change is intended to allow forms of political expression that would normally violate its rules.
This Friday, the Russian government announced that it will restrict access to Instagram in the country. The platform, popular among Russians, was used on Friday by opposition leader Alexei Navalni to convene protests against the war in Ukraine.
Last week, the government had already banned Facebook from the country after the network censored pro-Putin news. WhatsApp will not be affected by the legal measures at first, Russian news agency RIA said, citing a source, as the messaging app is considered a means of communication rather than a platform for publishing information.
Russia has struggled for more than a year to curb the influence of US tech giants, including Google and Twitter, by fining them multiple times for allowing what the Russian government considers illegal content. The invasion of Ukraine has raised tensions in the information war.
Social media is seen as an opportunity to diverge from the line taken by the Putin government — loyally followed by state media — that Moscow was forced to launch its “special military operation” to defend Russian populations from an alleged genocide in Ukraine, as well as to “denazify” the country.
The Investigative Committee said Facebook’s policy change could violate articles of Russian criminal law that prevents public demonstrations for extremist activities. “Such actions by the company’s management not only convey the idea that terrorist activity is permitted, but are aimed at inciting hatred and enmity against citizens of the Russian Federation,” the Russian prosecutor’s office said.
Internal Meta emails that Reuters had access to show that the US-based company had temporarily allowed posts calling for the death of Putin and Belarusian dictator Aleksandr Lukachenko.
“We hope it is not true, because if it is true, it will mean that there will have to be more decisive measures to shut down this company,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.
The United Nations Human Rights Office said the possible change in Facebook’s policy was “worrying”.
