UN Condemns Meta For Allowing ‘Hate Speech’ Against Russia 

The United Nations (UN) criticized Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc. for abruptly changing their hate speech policy and allowing calls for violence against Russia. The UN is now in agreeance with Russia that Meta’s policy change is dangerous.

On Friday, the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said, “I can tell you, from our standpoint, we stand clearly against all hate speech, all calls for violence. That kind of language is just unacceptable, from whichever quarter it comes from.”

The UN’s condemnation of Meta comes after they greenlighted Facebook users to praise Ukraine’s openly neo-nazi military unit while allowing calls for violence against ‘Russians and Russian soldiers’ when discussing the Ukraine invasion. The temporary change has allowed people living in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Ukraine, and Russia to unleash as much hate speech as possible against Russian President Vladimir Putin. 

Russia indicated it would ban Instagram across the country on March 14. 

Meta was in full panic mode after the UN’s comments. Meta’s President for Global Affairs and former British Deputy PM Nick Clegg tweeted a statement Friday afternoon to explain the decision. He said the goal of the policy change was to allow people to voice their anger over the Russian invasion of Ukraine, adding the policy decision is a “temporary” measure. 

“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. 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,” Clegg stated.

Responding to reports that the Russian government is considering designating Meta as an extremist organization for its policies in support of speech: pic.twitter.com/Y8sUbZDSML

— Nick Clegg (@nickclegg) March 11, 2022

Meanwhile, The Russian Embassy in the US responded to the policy change and asked Washington to hold Meta accountable for allowing extremist content to flood the social media channel. 

☝️We demand that 🇺🇸 authorities stop the extremist activities of @Meta, take measures to bring the perpetrators to justice. Users of #Facebook & #Instagram did not give the owners of these platforms the right to determine the criteria of truth and pit nations against each other. https://t.co/1RkrjRmEtA pic.twitter.com/sTacSm4nDt

— Russian Embassy in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) March 11, 2022

The evolution of this story is that the UN basically agrees with Russia that Meta’s move to weaponize its platforms is very dangerous. Even with the blowback, Meta is still defending its policy change. 

Meta appears to be only allowing messaging that is convenient to Western imperialism. Anything else is banned. Perhaps Meta is weaponizing its social media platforms to further Western agendas?

As the Ron Paul Institute’s Daniel McAdams observes: “Facebook, a de facto arm of government, is now encouraging calls for violence against innocent people who happen to be of a particular race or ethnic background or linguistic group.”