Business as usual: Facebook, Russia and hate speech

Disinformation experts adopt a bit of hair splitting in approving Meta's approach. "The policy calls for violence against Russian soldiers," insists the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab's Emerson Brooking. "A call for violence here, by the way, is also a call for resistance because Ukrainians resist a violent invasion."

This policy of intervening on the side of the Ukrainian cause to Russia's detriment is encouraged by Meta's President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg. In his March 11 statement, Clegg makes the case for selective violence even more pronounced. "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." Had standard content policies been followed, content "from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces would have been removed."

This immoderate stance does not have universal agreement. Media sociologist Jeremy Littau has made the pertinent observation that, "Facebook has rules, until it doesn't." It claims to be merely a platform above taking sides, "until it does." To not permit hate speech except in designated cases against certain people of a certain country was "one hell of a can of worms."

Meta's latest move is disturbingly refreshing in calling out a policy that remains haphazard, selectively applied, but always driven by the firm's own amoral calculus. The Ukraine conflict now gives the group a cover for practices that enfeeble and corrupt democracy while picking sides in war. The company is clearly not above encouraging posts advocating homicide and murder after testing the wind's direction. With Russia being rapidly cancelled culturally, politically and economically throughout the fold of Western countries, Zuckerberg is bound to think he is onto a winner. At the very least, he has found a distracting alibi.