Facebook will no longer let Ukrainians call for Putin's assassination after Russia bans Instagram

After briefly allowing users in Ukraine to call for the Russian president, Vladimir Putin's death, Meta-owned Facebook has said that it will now ban such posts. As per an update announced by the company, users in Ukraine will no longer be able to call for Putin's death, as such posts will be banned by the company. The new update was announced a day after Russia banned Instagram due to which 80 million people in the country lost access to the photo-sharing app.

Meta had previously announced new guidelines which allowed users to call for Putin's death on Instagram as well as Facebook. "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. We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the hate speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, except prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it's clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (eg content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc)," Meta had in a statement.

However, Facebook now seems to have reversed its decision to allow such posts on its platform. This interestingly comes after both Facebook and Instagram were banned by Russia. Meta, president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, in a fresh statement said that the posts that call for President Putin's death are banned.

As per a Bloomberg report, Meta in an internal email to its employees stated that the new moderation rule "is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general". However, he did add that Meta does not permit calls to assassinate a head of state."Last week, Meta permitted the users in Russia, Ukraine, Georgia and Poland, eastern Europe to put up posts asking for Putin's death.

Despite making amends, Russia banned Instagram, which snatched access to the photo-sharing app of over 80 million users. Instagram head Adam Mosseri had expressed his displeasure over Russia's decision to ban the app in the country. Taking to Twitter, Mosseri had said, "On Monday, Instagram will be blocked in Russia. This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world, as 80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong," Mosseri posted.

Russia's general prosecutor's office had recognized Meta as an "extremist organization and banned its activities on the territory of Russia". So far, only Instagram and Facebook have been banned in the country. The ban has not been extended to WhatsApp as of now.