Facebook Allows Posts That Call for Violence Against Russian President

Facebook and Instagram users in some countries can now call for violence against the Russian President and Russian soldiers as Meta has made a temporary change to its hate speech policy, Reuters is reporting.

All this comes after this Reuters report by @MunsifV @eculliford (with Meta statement in story confirming) https://t.co/7mRpkQiWmL

— Polina Ivanova (@polinaivanovva) March 11, 2022

Citing Meta’s internal emails sent out to content moderators, the publication notes that the social media company is also allowing posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

“The calls for the leaders’ deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method,” Meta noted in one email.

“We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it’s clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.),” it said in the email.

“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,’ a Meta spokesperson noted in a statement to Reuters.

The temporary policy changes on calls for violence to Russian soldiers apply to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

What do you guys think about this policy change from Meta?