A woman holds a smartphone with the Meta logo in front of the display of Facebook’s new rebranded Meta logo in this illustrative image taken October 28, 2021.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
On Friday, Russia opened a criminal case against Facebook’s parent metaplatform and offered to declare it an “extremist organization” after the social network changed its hate speech rules to allow users to call for violence against Russians in the context of the war with Ukraine.
“A criminal case has been opened … 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,” the Investigative Committee of Russia reported.
The committee reports directly to President Vladimir Putin. It was not immediately clear what the consequences of initiating a criminal case might be.
No comments were received from Meta in response to a Reuters request.
Two weeks into Russia’s war in Ukraine, a spokesperson for Meta said Thursday that the company has temporarily relaxed rules for political speech, allowing publications such as “death to Russian occupiers” but not allowing calls for violence against Russian civilians.
The meta said the temporary change is intended to allow forms of political expression that would normally break its rules. On Friday, its supervisory board said it was closely monitoring the war in Ukraine and Meta’s reaction.
Information wars
Russia has been seeking to curb the influence of US tech giants, including Google and Twitter Alphabet Inc, for more than a year now, repeatedly fining them for allowing what it considers illegal content.
But the invasion of Ukraine, met with a flurry of international condemnation and unprecedented sanctions, has sharply raised the stakes in the information war.
Social media provides an opportunity to take issue with Putin’s line, loyally followed by the tightly controlled state media, that Moscow was forced to launch its own “special military operation” to protect the Russian-speaking population of Ukraine from genocide and to demilitarize and “denazify” the country. .
The Investigative Committee said that Facebook’s actions may violate articles of Russian criminal law prohibiting public calls for extremist activities.
“Such actions by the management of the company (Meta) not only form the idea of the permissibility of terrorist activities, but are also aimed at inciting hatred and enmity towards the citizens of the Russian Federation,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said.
He stated that he had filed a lawsuit to recognize Meta as an extremist organization and ban its activities in Russia.
Internal Meta emails reviewed by Reuters revealed that the US company has temporarily allowed publications calling for the death of Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
“We hope that this is not true, because if it is true, then it will mean that the most drastic measures will be required to stop the activities of this company,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
The UN Human Rights Office said the potential change in Facebook’s policy was “concerned.”
Meta owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, which are popular in Russia.
Russia said last week it was banning Facebook in the country in response to what it says is restricting access to Russian media on the platform. The prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the state communications regulator will now also restrict access to Instagram.
Instagram is a tool of choice for imprisoned Putin opponent Alexei Navalny, who used it in a message released Friday through his lawyers and supporters calling on Russians to join protests against the war in Ukraine and “mad maniac Putin” this weekend.
According to the Russian news agency RIA, citing a source, WhatsApp will not be affected by legal actions, since the messaging app is considered a means of communication, and not a way to post information.