WASHINGTON — A viewer emailed the VERIFY team with a link to an article and a short message: "Please verify, urgent."
The Reuters article said Facebook and Instagram will allow people from certain countries to publish posts calling for violence against President Putin, Russian soldiers and other Russians in context of the war in Ukraine.
The Russian Embassy in the U.S. retweeted the Reuters article and said American authorities should “stop the extremist activities of Meta.”
THE QUESTION:
Is this Facebook and Instagram's current policy?
THE SOURCES:
- Meta spokesperson
- Reuters spokesperson
- Latest Reuters reporting- "Meta narrows guidance to prohibit calls for death of a head of state;" "Facebook owner defends policy on calls for violence that angered Russia"
THE ANSWER:
No, this is not Meta's current Facebook and Instagram policy.
WHAT WE FOUND:
Our Verify researchers contacted both Meta and Reuters.
A Meta spokesperson told us that they did make a temporary change to their hate speech policy. That change allows those living in Ukraine to post quote “threats of violence against the Russian military in the context of the invasion.”
This policy only applies to those in Ukraine and it does not allow people to about violence to Russians in general.
A spokesperson also confirmed they do not allow posts calling for the assassination of a head of state.
Meta's President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg defended the policy online.
"I want to be crystal clear: our policies are focused on protecting people’s rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country," he said in a tweet. "The fact is, 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."
He continued, saying "We will not tolerate Russophobia or any kind of discrimination, harassment or violence towards Russians on our platform."
Our researchers also reached out to Reuters.
In their reporting, Reuters attributed all of its information to internal Meta company emails.
A Reuters spokesperson told us Facebook revised its policy after their story was published on March 10. They have since addressed this change in later articles.
So we can Verify, Facebook and Instagram’s current policy does not allow calls for violence against President Putin, Russians in general or apply to those outside Ukraine.