Russia included this Tuesday the technology giant Metamatrix of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, on the list of terrorist and extremist organizations.
Meta entered the list drawn up by the Russian financial supervisor, Rosfinmonitoringso that the multinational will not have the money to finance its activities in this country. The Russian Justice prohibited the activities of the technological giant last Marchafter which the activities of Facebook and Instagram were blocked, a measure that did not affect WhatsApp. The decision of the Russian body places the American company at the same level as far-right nationalist groups, foreign terrorist organizations, and opposition groups from Russia.
In addition to Meta, the Vesna civil movement was also added to the list of terrorists and extremists, which for weeks called for protests against the partial mobilization decree approved by Putin in which citizens who are in reserve were called and, especially, who have served in the Russian armed forces.
Last March, the attorney general sued to veto the activities of Meta after it temporarily lifted the ban on residents of several countries in publish information with calls for violence against Russian citizens following the special military operation launched by Russia in Ukraine.
Meta in favor of death threats against Russia
Last March, the company acknowledged there was a temporary change in hate speech policies after information was leaked through internal emails from Mark Zuckerberg’s company. In them, it was specified that written or graphic messages could be published that call for violence against Russian soldiers and inciting the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In a statement, company spokesman Andy Stone explained that exceptions were allowed on a temporary basis due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine if they do not include “credible” death threats against Russian civilians. “As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we have temporarily allowed forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, such as violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We will not yet allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” the Meta spokesman said.
In this sense, network moderators, those who censor content that does not comply with company policies, would allow calls for the death of leaders, as long as they do not contain two indicators of credibility that are the location and the method. However, Meta allowed calls for the death of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Belarusian counterpart, Alexander Lukashenko, issued from Ukraine, Poland and Russia itself. Temporary permission to incite hatred was in force in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
The emails even included the permission of hate content against russian soldiers since they considered them as representatives of the Russian army. “We are issuing a grant from the spirit of the policy to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be eliminated under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) directed at Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) target Russians where it is clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g. content mentions invasion, self-defense, etc.)” the statement stated.
WhatsApp suspicions
WhatsApp is also under suspicion since during the last week the Russian businessman creator of Telegram, Pavel Durov, expressed harsh accusations and assured that you have to stay away from the application.
“I’m not pressuring people to switch to Telegram here. With more than 700 million active users and more than 2 million daily subscriptions, Telegram does not need additional promotion. You can use any messaging app you want, but stay away from whatsapp: it has been a surveillance tool for 13 years”, Remarked the creator of Telegram.
Durov also told about a security flaw that the app had in early October. “This was made possible by a security issue revealed by WhatsApp itself last week. All a hacker had to do to take control of his phone was to send you a malicious video or start a video call with you on WhatsApp,” he explained.
The creator of Telegram recalled the cybersecurity problems that the application has previously had. “Every year, we hear of an issue with WhatsApp that puts everything on its users’ devices at risk. Which means that there is almost certainly a new security flaw there already. Such problems are not incidental: they are backdoors planted. If a backdoor is discovered and needs to be removed, another one is added,” Durov specified.