The double standards of Facebook’s ‘death to Russians’ policy

So, Facebook and Instagram users are now allowed to call for people to be killed. But only if the people they’re wishing death upon are Russian. If it’s Ruskies you hate so much that you feel the urge to go on social media and plead with someone to kill them, then Facebook and Instagram’s normally censorious moderators won’t bat an eyelid. Knock yourself out. Kill the Russians!

This is the news that Meta – the parent company of Facebook and Instagram – has made a temporary change to its hate-speech policy. In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it will allow its users in certain countries to make violent comments about Russian forces. If you live in Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, Georgia, Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Armenia, Azerbaijan or Russia itself, then you are now permitted to engage in ‘violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the hate-speech policy’.