Russian prosecutors asked a court to designate the US tech
giant as an "extremist organisation," and the communications
regulator said it would restrict access to Meta's Instagram starting March 14.
The company said the decision would affect 80 million users in Russia.
"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 said.
The committee reports directly to President Vladimir Putin.
It was not immediately clear what the consequences of the criminal case might
be.
Meta Global Affairs President Nick Clegg responded after the
Russian government action with a tweeted statement saying that the company
aimed to protect rights to speech as an expression of self-defence reacting to
the invasion of Ukraine and that the policy only applied to Ukraine.
"If we applied our standard content policies without
any adjustments we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians
expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which
would rightly be viewed as unacceptable," Clegg wrote.
"We have no quarrel with the Russian people. There is
no change at all in our policies on hate speech as far as the Russian people
are concerned," he added.
Two weeks into Russia's war in Ukraine, a Meta spokesperson
said on Thursday the company had temporarily altered its rules for political
speech, allowing posts such as "death to the Russian invaders,"
although it would not allow calls for violence against Russian civilians.
Meta said the temporary change aimed to allow for forms of
political expression that would normally violate its rules.
Its oversight board said on Friday that it had been briefed
by the company on Ukraine-related policies and that context was important for
content policies and enforcement.
Internal Meta emails previously seen by Reuters said the
temporary policy changes on calls for violence to Russian soldiers had applied
to the markets of: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia,
Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.
A Meta spokesperson declined to provide comment other than
Clegg's statement.
The emails seen by Reuters also showed the US company had
temporarily allowed posts that call for the death of Putin or Belarusian President
Alexander Lukashenko.
"We hope it is not true because if it is true then it
will mean that there will have to be the most decisive measures to end the
activities of this company," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said
Information Wars
Russia has for more than a year been striving to curb the
influence of US tech giants including Alphabet's Google and Twitter, repeatedly
fining them for allowing what it deems to be illegal content.
But the invasion of Ukraine — met by a storm of
international condemnation and unprecedented sanctions — has sharply raised the
stakes in the information war.
Social media provide an opportunity for dissent against
Putin's line — loyally followed by the tightly controlled state media - that
Moscow was forced to launch its "special military operation" to
defend Russian-speakers in Ukraine against genocide and to demilitarise and
"denazify" the country.
The Investigative Committee said the Facebook move could
violate articles of the Russian criminal law against public calls for extremist
activities.
"Such actions of the (Meta) company's management not
only form an idea that terrorist activity is permissible, but are aimed at
inciting hatred and enmity towards the citizens of the Russian
Federation," the state prosecutor's office said.
It said it had applied to a court to recognise Meta as an
extremist organisation and prohibit its activities in Russia.
Meta's other services also are popular in Russia. Facebook
last year had an estimated 7.5 million users and WhatsApp 67 million, according
to researcher Insider Intelligence.
Last week, Russia said it was banning Facebook in the
country in response to what it said were restrictions of access to Russian
media on the platform.
Instagram is a favoured tool of jailed Putin opponent Alexei
Navalny, who used it in a message posted via his lawyers and supporters on
Friday to call for Russians to join protests against the Ukraine war and
"mad maniac Putin" this weekend.
WhatsApp will not be affected by the legal moves, Russia's
RIA news agency cited a source as saying, as the messaging app is considered a
means of communication not a way to post information. © Reuters
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