As Russia and US along with its allies fight an information warfare, debate over censorship, hate speech and fake news heightened once more after Facebook said that it will ease its policy on violent speech.
Facebook said that it will allow statements like “death to Russian invaders” to be posted but will disallow threats against civilians. “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,” Facebook parent company Meta said in an internal email to its content moderators.
https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1502066222304841729?s=20&t=62LOvMCfVGVkoGP_1EzctQ
Russia also accused Meta of engaging in extremism. “Meta’s aggressive and criminal policy leading to incitement of hatred and hostility towards Russians is outrageous,” the Russian embassy in the United States said. Citing the Reuters report, which was the first to inform of the development, it was irked that Meta was allowing social media posts which discuss death to Russian president Vladimir Putin or Belarusian president Alexander Lukashenko.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1502079894339084288?s=20&t=62LOvMCfVGVkoGP_1EzctQ
It also said that it will allow the policy in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
A disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab told news agency AFP that the policy calls for violence against Russian soldiers but also can be seen as a call for resistance because Ukrainians are resisting a violent invasion.
The move by Meta drew contrasting views. Journalist Glenn Greenwald in a tweet questioned the policy. “That’s nice. Definitely grateful that we live in a society where Mark Zuckeberg and Google executives determine when we can advocate violence against certain people and when we can’t. Seems healthy and democratic,” Greenwald said in a tweet.
Lehigh University professor Jeremy Littau also said that the announcement is akin to opening a can of worms since it somehow justifies normalising hate speech. “We don’t allow hate speech except against certain people from a certain country’ is one hell of a can of worms,” he tweeted.
Read the Latest News and Breaking News here
Comments
0 comment