A day after social media giant Meta Platforms Inc. eased their hate speech policy to allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers, the Russian Prosecutor General’s office, on 11th March 2022, has asked the courts to declare Meta an extremist organization.
On Thursday, Meta Inc. had made temporary changes to its hate speech policy to allow users to post content that calls for violence, including a call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko amidst the ongoing invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Belarus is allying with Russia in this war.
Responding to this, Russia opened a criminal case against Facebook’s parent Meta Platforms Inc on Friday and moved to designate it as an “extremist organization”. The Prosecutor General’s Office has requested the courts toMeta as an extremist organization under Russian law and ban all its activities in Russia. The Prosecutor General also asked for an investigation into whether Meta broke laws on “terrorist propaganda” and “inciting hatred.”
The state prosecutor also asked Russia’s communications regulator Roskomnadzor to restrict access to Meta’s Instagram social networking service. Russia had already blocked Facebook in the country last week.
According to a report by The Jerusalem Post, Russia’s Investigative Committee has said, “A criminal case has been initiated … in connection with illegal calls 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.” This committee directly reports to the Russian President Vladimir Putin and the immediate consequences of the said criminal case are not known.
Reportedly, the office of the Russian state prosecutor has said, “Such actions of the company’s management not only form an idea that terrorist activity is permissible, but are aimed at inciting hatred and enmity towards the citizens of the Russian Federation.”
Earlier, a Meta spokesperson had 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 same thing was said in the internal email accessed by Reuters. In these emails, it was mentioned that the Meta would allow posts that call for the death of Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko only if they did not contain other targets or discuss methods or locations.
This came after Russia had announced that it was banning Facebook in the country after the tech giant had enforced restrictions on Russian media on its platform. The Kremlin had cracked down on tech companies, including Twitter, over their arbitrary restriction of Russian state media RT and Sputnik regulations.