Meta-Russia standoff worsens

As Russia considers designating Meta as an extremist organisation for applying its policies to speech in the context of Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, the social network has said that its decision is temporary, taken in "extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances". In a rare move, Meta has allowed posts with violent speech toward Russian soldiers on Facebook and Instagram in specific countries, including calls for harm or even death of Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Nick Clegg, President, Global Affairs at Meta said late on Friday that their policies are focused on protecting people's rights to speech as an expression of self-defence in reaction to a military invasion of their country. "The fact is, if we applied our standard content policies without any adjustments we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which would rightly be viewed as unacceptable," he argued. Meta said that it is only going to apply this policy in Ukraine itself. "We have no quarrel with the Russian people. There is no change at all in our policies on hate speech as far as the Russian people are concerned. We will not tolerate 'Russophobia' or any kind of discrimination, harassment or violence towards Russians on our platform," Clegg informed. (IANS)

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