Meta Platforms Inc. allowed posts specifically calling for the “death” of Russian President Vladimir Putin to remain on its social media platforms Instagram and Facebook in recent days, Reuters reported on Monday, citing internal Meta emails.
“The emails seen by Reuters also showed the U.S. company [Meta] had temporarily allowed posts that call for the death of Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko,” the news agency reported on March 14.
Asked by Reuters about Meta’s allowance of calls to murder Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded, “We hope it is not true because if it is true then it will mean that there will have to be the most decisive measures to end the activities of this company.”
Reuters relayed Meta’s conscious decision not to censor calls for the “death” of Putin on Monday while reporting on the company’s recent change to its hate speech rules as applied to its social media platforms Instagram and Facebook.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov in Saint Petersburg on June 6, 2019. (Alexey Nikolsky/AFP/Getty Images)
Announcing the policy change on March 10, a Meta spokesperson said in a statement:
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.
“The calls for the leaders’ [Putin and Lukashenko] deaths will be allowed unless they contain other targets or have two indicators of credibility, such as the location or method, one email said, in a recent change to the company’s rules on violence and incitement,” Reuters first revealed on March 10.
“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,” Reuters reported after reviewing one internal Meta email.
“In the email recently sent to moderators, Meta highlighted a change in its hate speech policy pertaining both to Russian soldiers and to Russians in the context of the invasion,” the news agency noted.
Russia’s communications and media regulator, Roskomnadzor, announced plans on March 11 to restrict access to Instagram within Russia starting March 14 because the platform was supporting “calls to commit violent acts against Russian citizens, including military personnel.”
Russia’s Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes, also announced on March 11 it launched a “criminal case” against Meta in connection with the company’s promotion of “illegal calls for murder and violence against citizens of the Russian Federation.”
“These actions contain signs of crimes under Articles 280 and 205.1 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation – (public calls for extremist activities; assistance in terrorist activities),” the committee said in a statement.