"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," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement to Reuters on March 11. Meta is essentially allowing Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to post violent content against Russian soldiers and politicians, which would have normally been against the company's hate speech policy. The company is even allowing calls for death to Russian President Vladimir Putin or Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, Reuters said. Many tech companies including social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have announced a number of measures against Russia, specifically targeting the spread of misinformation by Russian state-owned media RT and Sputnik. In retaliation to this, Russia earlier this week blocked access to Facebook and Twitter. But the latest move by Meta to allow hate speech against Russian soldiers is unlikely to sit well among other countries. It will most definitely receive scrutiny from governments across the world including India because the exception is being made without any clear guidelines in place for such kinds of exceptions. It opens a can of worms because today it's allowing hate speech against Russians, but tomorrow it can be hate speech against some political faction that Facebook thinks is wrong. https://twitter.com/RespectIsVital/status/1502073311492247553?s=20&t=8ezzjftpktDr7p4N7PXX0A https://twitter.com/JeremyLittau/status/1502066222304841729?s=20&t=8ezzjftpktDr7p4N7PXX0A However, this is not the first instance of Facebook modifying its hate speech…
