Facebook temporarily acknowledges the call for violence in several countries against the Russian army and Putin

Internal emails seen by Reuters showed Thursday that Meta Platforms will allow Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to invoke violence against Russian and Russian soldiers in connection with war in Ukraine, in a temporary change in its policy against hate speech.

According to internal messages to the content moderators, the company of social media some will also temporarily allow post demanding the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in countries including Russia, Ukraine and Poland.

“Following the Russian attack on Ukraine, we have temporarily allowed some forms of political expression that normally violate our rules such as violent rhetoric such as ‘Death to the Russians’,” a spokesperson for Meta said. “We continue to disallow serious calls for violence against Russian civilians.”

One letter stated that leader death requests would be allowed unless they included other objectives or included two indicators of severity such as location or means, in a recent change in the company’s rules on combating violence and incitement.

According to one of the emails, temporary policy changes regarding calls for violence against Russian soldiers apply to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine.

In the recent email to the content moderators, Meta noted a change in the hate speech policy towards Russian soldiers in the context of the war.

“We do this because we have noticed that in this specific context, the ‘Russian soldiers’ are used on behalf of the Russian army. The policy against hate speech continues to prohibit attacks on Russians, “the letter reads.

Last week, Russia announced it would ban Facebook in the country in response to what he claimed were restrictions on access to media Russians on the platform.

Moscow cracked down on tech companies, including Twitter, which said it faced restrictions in the country during its attack on Ukraine, which Russia called a “special operation.”