Facebook renamed itself Meta in October to reflect its focus on creating virtual spaces where people can socialize and work.
James Martin/CNETFacebook’s parent company Meta said Tuesday it’s demoting content shared by Russian state-controlled media outlets posted from their Facebook pages and Instagram accounts.
The social media giant said it will also make content from Russian state-controlled media outlets tougher to find and demote posts globally that contain links to Russian-state controlled media on Facebook. Over the next few days, Facebook will label links and provide more information to people before they share them. The label says “This link is from a publisher Facebook believes may be partially or wholly under the editorial control of the Russian government.” Meta also plans to put these measures in place on its photo-and-video service Instagram. The company, which didn’t provide many details about the demotion, said Russian state media content will not be recommended to its users as well. Facebook uses an algorithm to surface content it thinks is more relevant to its users higher in the social network’s Feed.
Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last week, Meta has been facing more pressure from governments including Ukraine to crack down on propaganda and false claims spread by Russian state-controlled media outlets. At the same time, Meta says it’s trying to balance concerns about the spread of misinformation with freedom of expression.
Nick Clegg, who oversees global affairs at Meta and is a former UK deputy prime minister, said in a virtual press conference that people, including politicians such as Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, turn to social media during a crisis to protest and share what’s happening in real-time around the world. About 10% of people in Europe, and 4% globally have a Facebook friend in Ukraine, he said.
“We continue to work to make sure our services are available for people in the middle of this crisis. That is why we think it’s important to make sure our services operate in Russia,” he said.
Clegg said harsher restrictions aren’t off the table but he emphasized throughout the call that Meta is not the government, but a private company that is responding to requests from governments.
“At the end of the day, the most powerful antidote to propaganda is not only restricting circulation, but circulating the answers to it. And that is why we always want to strike the right balance to allow the flow of counter speech to continue on our services,” Clegg said.
On Monday, Meta said it will restrict access to Russian state-controlled media outlets RT and Sputnik across the European Union. The EU is an economic and political union of 27 countries, including France, Germany and Spain. The move came after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a tweet the EU’s executive branch is developing tools to ban “toxic and harmful disinformation” published by RT and Sputnik and their subsidiaries.
RT, pushed back against comments from European government officials and actions by social media platforms. “None of them had pointed to a single example, a single grain of evidence that what RT has reported over these days, and continues to report, is not true,” Anna Belkina, deputy editor-in-chief at RT, said in a statement. Sputnik called the actions by social networks “another act of censorship and double standards.” “This is a full-scale witch hunt, a widescale information war against the Russian media,” Sputnik’s press arm said in a statement.
Meta announced over the weekend it had restricted access to several accounts, including from Russian state-controlled media, in Ukraine following a government request.
Last week, Russia said it’s partly restricting access to Facebook after the social network refused to stop fact-checking and labeling content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations. Russia’s telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, alleges Facebook violated “fundamental human rights” by restricting the country’s state-controlled media.
Clegg said Russia’s attempt to throttle its services have impacted video and other multimedia content but it’s showing up differently on Facebook and Instagram. “The degradation of the service is definitely discernible,” he said.
Meta’s restrictions of Russian state-controlled media content could also prompt these outlets to spend more time on messaging services that are harder to moderate. Meta said the restrictions announced on Tuesday doesn’t apply to its messaging service WhatsApp.
“It’s an end-to-end encrypted platform so we don’t have access to the content of these messages. We’ll be continuing to monitor the situation and assess the way people are using the platform,” said Nathaniel Gleicher, who oversees security policy at Meta, on the call.
RT has been directing followers to its channel on Telegram, another end-to-end encrypted messaging service.
Meta’s remarks came on the same day that the company released its fourth quarter report about how it enforces its community standards, which outlines what users aren’t allowed to post on its platform such as hate speech and harassment.
