Zuck’s War: Facebook Says You Can Call for Death of Russians, but Not Putin

Facebook has partially backtracked on its previous announcement that calling for violence against Russians was acceptable on the platform, stating now that while its fine to call for the death of Russians, calling for the death of world leaders like Vladimir Putin is against the rules.

Reuters reports that Facebook (now known as Meta) has stated that it is altering its content moderation policy for Ukraine once again, this time making calls for the death of heads of state including Vladimir Putin and President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko a violation of its rules. The decision is a partial pivot on last week’s announcement that the company would be allowing users to call for violence against Russians.

Breitbart News reported last week that an email from Facebook stated that calls for violence against both Russian soldiers and Russians were permissible on the platform, as long as the context of the invasion of Ukraine was made clear:

“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.

Now the company is altering its policy, with Global Affairs President Nick Clegg stating in a post on the company’s internal platform: “We are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general. We also do not permit calls to assassinate a head of state…So, in order to remove any ambiguity about our stance, we are further narrowing our guidance to make explicit that we are not allowing calls for the death of a head of state on our platforms.”

Clegg added: “These are difficult decisions. Circumstances in Ukraine are fast moving. We try to think through all the consequences, and we keep our guidance under constant review because the context is always evolving.”

Clegg was quick to say that the company did not support “Russophobia,” stating: “Meta stands against Russophobia. We have no tolerance for calls for genocide, ethnic cleansing, or any kind of discrimination, harassment, or violence towards Russians on our platform.”

Read more at Reuters here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or contact via secure email at the address lucasnolan@protonmail.com