Russia announced on Friday that it has restricted access to the social network Instagram, which it accuses of spreading calls for violence against Russians in connection with the conflict in Ukraine.
Russia’s powerful Investigative Committee earlier said it was prosecuting Meta for ‘calling for the murder’ of Russians after the parent company of Instagram and Facebook eased its rules on violent posts aimed at the military and leaders Russians.
The organization specified launching these investigations “because of the illegal calls for the murder of Russian nationals on the part of the collaborators of the American company Meta”.
And according to the Attorney General’s office, “content distributed on Instagram contains calls to commit violent acts against citizens of Russia, including military personnel”.
The social media giant said Thursday that it was making exceptions to its policy on incitement to violence and hatred, by not removing posts hostile to the military and Russian leaders.
“Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are making leniency for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules on violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders,'” confirmed to the AFP Andy Stone, head of communications at Meta.
“We continue to not allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” he added.
Reuters reported on Thursday emails exchanged by Meta content moderators claiming that the temporary exception to the rule applies to Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia , Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
“Rules of War in Real Time”
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights expressed concern on Friday about this decision by the American group.
“This is very clearly a very, very complex subject, but one which raises concerns in terms of human rights and international humanitarian law”, explained Elizabeth Throssell, spokesperson for the Office of the High Commissioner, during a press briefing in Geneva.
The vagueness surrounding this announcement “could certainly contribute to hate speech directed against Russians in general,” she said.
Meta did not react to a request from AFP on Friday.
For Emerson Brooking, resident scholar at the Atlantic Council, an American think tank, the exceptions authorized by Meta represent an attempt to adapt to an extremely fluid and tense situation.
“Facebook is trying to write rules of war in real time”, summarizes this specialist in online disinformation to AFP. “War and violence are inextricably linked, it is impossible to separate them. »
He recognizes that there is a risk of overflow which could harm the Russian population, beyond its military and political leaders alone.
“We observe throughout history that the violent actions of one country against another lead to calls for violence, intolerance or hatred against foreigners associated with the aggressor country,” he explains. “One can think of the persecutions in the United States against the Germans during the First World War or against the Japanese during the Second World War. »
However, the change proposed by Facebook “clearly disapproves of calls for the dehumanization of all Russians,” recalls Mr. Brooking.
Facebook already blocked in Russia
This is not the first time that Mark Zuckerberg’s group has tolerated this kind of publication, even if examples are rare: in June 2021, the network had thus authorized for two weeks messages from Iranian opponents calling for the death of the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Twitter, for its part, did not delete a tweet from US Senator Lindsey Graham last week, where the elected Republican called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the war. The platform later confirmed to The Daily Beast that this post did not violate its rules.
Russia had already blocked Facebook on its territory last week in retaliation for the Californian group’s decision to ban media close to the government (including the RT channel and the Sputnik site) in Europe.
She joined the very closed club of countries banning the largest social network in the world, alongside China and North Korea.
Access to Twitter is heavily restricted in Russia for reasons similar to the blocking of Facebook.
Russia is one of the most restrictive countries in terms of freedom of the press and expression, and the situation has deteriorated further in recent weeks with the blocking of most of the remaining independent media.