Meta’s properties — including Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp — are likely to cease their activities completely in Russia as the US social media company is now facing a criminal investigation over calls for violence targeting the Russian invaders of Ukraine.
“A criminal case has been initiated (…) 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,” Russia’s Investigative Committee stated today, as cited by Reuters.
On its side, the Prosecutor General’s office has “lodged a motion with a court for designating Meta Platforms Inc. as an extremist organization and banning its operations in the territory of the Russian Federation in accordance with the Federal Law on Countering Extremist Activities.”
These moves came as a response to a decision by Meta to relax its rules against hate speech. As revealed yesterday by Reuters, Meta has instructed its moderation team to allow temporarily users from certain countries to publish calls for for violence against Russian troops in Ukraine as well as against Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
“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’,” a Meta spokesperson acknowledged in a statement cited by Reuters.
However, Meta still “won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” she added.
Meta’s new rules are in force in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Hungary, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
The Russian embassy in Washington promptly demanded “that the US authorities stop the extremist activities of Meta and take measures to bring the perpetrators to justice,” and insisted that Meta did not have “the right to determine the criteria of truth and pit nations against each other.”
Last week Russia’s Internet regulator Roskomnadzor already took measures to block access to Facebook from within Russia. It justified its decision by alleged discriminations against Russian media and information resources. Recent cases concerned the Facebook accounts of the Zvezda military TV channel, the news agency RIA Novosti news agency as well as international state-owned media Sputnik and Russia Today.
The days of other US social networks in Russia also seem numbered, as they have a long history of disputes with the Russian authorities. Most recently YouTube blocked Russia Today and Sputnik across Europe and suspended monetization for a variety of Russian state media channels.
Since Feb. 26 — two days after Russia started invading Ukraine — Twitter’s services have been restricted in Russia, but not fully blocked.
Last year, Russian courts repeatedly fined these companies, alongside Chinese TikTok, for failing to remove unlawful content or to store personal data inside the country.
Thus, in late December, Russia slapped tech giants Google and Meta with penalties totaling over $125 million for failure to remove banned content.
