Facebook Suspends Rules to Allow Some Calls for Violence Against Russian Invaders – CNET [CNET]

Facebook‘s parent company, Meta, said Thursday that it will allow some violent speech against Russian invaders that would normally violate its rules, because it views these remarks as a form of political speech. 

“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,” Meta spokesman Andy Stone said in a tweet.

The rare exemption to the company’s rules against hate speech, which bars users from posting content targeting a group of people, including violent content, shows how the world’s largest social network is moderating content about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The social network has also been facing a greater number of calls to crack down more heavily on propaganda and misinformation. Last week, Russia said it was blocking the social network after Facebook started to make content from Russian state-controlled media tougher to find on its platform and tapped third party fact-checkers to debunk false claims.

The Russian Embassy in the US responded to the reports saying that Meta’s actions were equivalent to a declaration of information war against Russia, according to a report by Russian state-operated news agency Novosti.

For years, Facebook has also grappled with criticism that its rules are being enforced unevenly. The company created a semi-independent oversight board to weigh in on its toughest content moderation decisions. 

Reuters, which first reported the policy change, said that in certain countries, including Russia, Ukraine and Poland, the social media giant is also allowing some posts that call for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko. The changes also apply to Meta-owned photo-and-video service Instagram. 

Citing internal emails, Reuters said these calls for death won’t be allowed if they contain other targets or include “two indicators of credibility” such as the location or method of death. The posts must also be about the invasion of Ukraine. Calls for violence against Russian soldiers will also be allowed in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine, Reuters reported.

Also Thursday, Facebook and Twitter removed posts from Russia’s embassy in the UK over false claims surrounding the bombing of a maternity hospital in the Ukraine city of Mariupol on Wednesday. In one tweet, Russia’s embassy claimed that a pregnant woman seen in a photo of casualties at a the hospital was actually a Ukraine “beauty blogger” and suggested that the photo was staged propaganda, CNBC reported.

At least one child and two adults were killed at the hospital, and another 17 were injured, Ukraine officials have said.

Meta didn’t immediately answer questions about how long it expects the exemptions will be in place or the number of Facebook posts that will be impacted.