20 ms·

A Moscow court has banned Facebook and Instagram as “extremist” organizations

75 points by nixass 5y ago

imwillofficial 5y ago
Facebook allowing targeted calls for violence to one side of a conflict only had a lot to do with this decision.
- chasd00 5y ago
  I hope facebook's decision to allow calls for violence against the russian military makes it clear how ridiculous it is to try to define hate speech. Further, it should also be clear that what is censored on facebook will always change with the whims of facebook executives and will never be properly defined.
  - happytoexplain 5y ago
    It is also impossible to draw a bright line on what counts as porn, but we don't throw up our hands and allow it everywhere. The implication that rules must have infinitely objective interpretation is farcical. Virtually no rules or laws meet this bar - it's unrealistic.
- simion314 5y ago
  GTFO, there is tons of Russian propaganda on FB, including fake shit but some Russian trolls get upset when social media and moderators remove provable false things.
  - HKH2 5y ago
    Are you sure you're responding to the right comment? The OP was referring to Facebook allowing calls for violence against Russians. (Is that fake news?) Is your argument that Facebook doing that played no part in Russia's decision?
    - simion314 5y ago
      He was upset that FB has content only in one direction, anti-Russia. I said this is not true and I am expecting a lot of ani-Russia, anti-Putin content to exist on FB, but don't pretend that this is only one sided. Anyway , weird Putin coward and did not unplug the Internet yet, they were testing this in the past so I am wondering why still keep it, young Russian have access to the truth and this is a big danger for the war-criminal
      - freedomben 5y ago
        > He was upset that FB has content only in one direction, anti-Russia. Where did you get that? The entirety of the post I saw was: > Facebook allowing targeted calls for violence to one side of a conflict only had a lot to do with this decision. Can you point to the part where they get upset, or otherwise makes a value judgment at all?
      - HKH2 5y ago
        > He was upset that FB has content only in one direction, anti-Russia. What makes you think the OP is upset? It seems like a neutral argument to me. Did the OP edit their post?
        simion314 5y ago
        I might have misinterpreted the comment, now is flagged, would be a good idea if OP learns to be more clear and what he means and maybe link to the event he is refering rather then assume everyone will understand his allusions. Someone linked something so I am reading that now.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        I was exceedingly clear and neutral. Your own emotion read into words that were not there. I simply stated a fact and offered no judgement on the merits of the action.
    - freedomben 5y ago
- etchalon 5y ago
  Are you arguing that there's moral similarity between an invading army and people who'd prefer not to be invaded, because "well, it's violence"?
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    Do you see where I made any argument?
- jdrc 5y ago
  It's not like anyone feels bad for this decision
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  Unfortunately, regardless of any philosophy on morality, it is simply unrealistic to expect the citizens of a nation being invaded - a word applicable here without even the merest qualification - to not call for the violent repulsion of the invader, loudly and in great numbers, regardless of how "good" or "bad" the invader's justification is. Edit: To reconnect my point to the topic - the weight of millions of simultaneous lamentations under such a real, physical attack is simply heavier than the weight of a content policy of a media designed for people to talk to each other. It would be difficult, both morally and practically, to not make an exception in this case. Content policies can not be immutable, and should not be.
  - VictorPath 5y ago
    Then the citizens of Donetsk should be able to call for violence against the Ukranians invading their country.
    - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
      How can Ukraine invade their own country?
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
      Let me know when the Ukranian army crosses the frontier of the breakaway region. Until then, "the Ukranians invading their country" is rhetoric that is unconnected to reality.
      - NoGravitas 5y ago
        Okay, they've just been shelling it for the last 8 years. That's totally fine until someone puts a foot over.
        happytoexplain 5y ago
        I think you're letting emotions migrate the topic. The implication is not that it is "fine". War is never "fine", no matter how "just". The question is that of when it becomes impossible or undesirable to police "calls for violence", which is very broad. Ownership of that area is much more controversial than the ownership of Ukraine, and the actions taken are much less dramatic. I.e. attempting to prevent separatism is much less black and white than responding to a full blown foreign invasion. However, I understand there are people who disagree with what I think is "obvious".
- tomjen3 5y ago
  If somebody invades your house and abducts your family you may kill them in most juristrictions I know of. They may not kill you. This is not a disagreement, twist, two parties having their point of view and stuff that we have grown up with, this is an unjustified war of aggression. The only argument we should agree to hear from the Russian side is how they will disprove the accusations of a war of aggression. Hopefully we can soon get back to behaving like civilized countries, and start the deputinization process of Russia.
  - imwillofficial 5y ago
    You sound as confident of the facts as I did when I believed Saddam had WMDs. Sometimes your understanding of the world is incomplete. I would encourage an open mind, lest history make a fool of you like it did me.
NoGravitas 5y ago
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Technically, they are not wrong They are absolutely, technically and materially, wrong. Calls to arms to resist an invader is close to the opposite of extremism. It’s survival. A correcting force back towards the status quo. Extremism, by definition, seeks to change the status quo.
  - Dharmat55 5y ago
    Politely pointing out that your argument also justifies any and all White nationalist extremism in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc in opposition to demographic replacement.
    - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
      > your argument also justifies any and all White nationalist extremism in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc in opposition to demographic replacement Demographic replacement is analogised by these groups to invasion. What’s happening in Ukraine lays bare the emptiness of that analogy. Immigrants don’t bring their tanks and air force.
- NullPrefix 5y ago
  What do you mean "technically"?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
MAGZine 5y ago
Something tickles me about how the country with reputation for disinformation was so quick to ban Facebook and Instagram. What do they know?
- vmception 5y ago
  Municipal court cases are never news. A municipal court for a district in Russia is just clickbait.
  - vmception 5y ago
    Feel free to correct me if i have it wrong
- jonathanstrange 5y ago
  Nothing, obviously. Their disinformation campaigns of the past 15 years have failed and the priorities have shifted towards terrorizing and misinforming their own citizens.
  - Gupie 5y ago
    Apart from Trump and Brexit.
    - jonathanstrange 5y ago
      I guess you're right, plus a number of far-right phenomena in the EU that were also partly caused and sponsored by Russian campaigns such as the AfD, Pegida, Front National, Lega Nord, etc. I should have said "are failing now."
      - zahllos 5y ago
        I would disagree on brexit. Am British and brexit sentiment predated the campaign by quite some time. Also many people eligible to vote for this and holding such anti EU positions were elderly, so if the Russian influence campaign was entirely online they would all have missed it. Maybe Russia funded some campaigns, not sure. Maybe they were able to sway some voters, again, not sure. But my impression is that there was already a sizeable portion of the population pro brexit. I'd be more inclined to lay this at the feet of Murdoch than Putin.
random3 5y ago
If you push the platform responsibility further you can ban anything like their cloud or their government, which are also platforms. This makes content, content author implications viral for whatever they "sit" on top.
tomc1985 5y ago
The ban will, of course, not apply to their psy-ops divisions
timonoko 5y ago
Interesting part of "Moscow Court" is that when Finland invited indigenous Finns (eg Ingrians) to move to Finland in 1990, we suddenly had enormous amount of "lawyers" (of Soviet law) moving in and attaining Finnish citizenship. Too late it was discovered that you can declare any ethnicity at any time in Soviet Union.
- ainar-g 5y ago
  > you can declare any ethnicity at any time in Soviet Union. If you mean the official ethnicity that Soviet people had in their internal passports, this is strictly false. The (in)famous Fifth Field has always been filled based on the parents' ethnicities. If both of one's parents were of one ethnicity (e.g. both are Tatars) then the child receives that ethnicity in their passport. If the parents belonged to two different ethnicities (e.g. a Russian mother and a Tatar father), the child was free to choose one of these two when receiving their first passport at the age of 16. See [1] (in Russian). [1]: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B0 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%8F...
- timonoko 5y ago
  The point is that these "Lawyers of Soviets Law" have been unemployed for 30 years enjoying 1000 euro unemployed benefits. They need to be listed ASAP and deported. And Finland is joining NATO.
freedomben 5y ago
Before we all pile on Russia, if you aren't aware of the rule change that FB made to allow violent statements against Russians (but not against any other group), you should learn about that. The Moscow Court: > A Moscow court on Monday banned Facebook and Instagram as "extremist" organizations, after authorities accused U.S. tech giant Meta of tolerating "Russophobia" during the conflict in Ukraine. And that is at least somewhat true by Facebook's own rule[1]: > “As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders’. We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” [2] Now that said, Russian authorities were already looking for excuses to ban (and I believe already had effectively banned FB), so it didn't really matter. But, FB played into their hands by giving them a (somewhat) legitimate reason. Note: I'm not making a value judgment here, just stating facts. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/11/facebook-and-instagram-let-users-call-for-death-to-russian-soldiers-over-ukraine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/11/facebook-... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-instagram-temporarily-allow-calls-violence-against-russians-2022-03-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...
- NationalPark 5y ago
  The reality is a lot narrower than you're implying, however: “We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the hate speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, except prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it’s clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (eg content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc),” ... Meta spokesman Joe Osborne previously said the company was “for the time being, making a narrow exception for praise of the Azov regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard”. Specifically the rule change that FB made to allow violent statements against Russians (but not against any other group) is an overstatement that is not factual, because it implies that violent speech toward Russians is generally tolerated on Facebook.
  - freedomben 5y ago
Tenoke 5y ago
It's at least a bit more sensible than Belarus declaring Deutsche Welle extremist 2 weeks back.. https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-classifies-deutsche-welle-as-extremist/a-61088937 https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-classifies-deutsche-welle-as-e...
cf100clunk 5y ago
Nitter link if you prefer: https://nitter.pussthecat.org/MoscowTimes/status/1505914095274450949 https://nitter.pussthecat.org/MoscowTimes/status/15059140952...
eric_b 5y ago
Based on the headline alone, I'd add Twitter and Reddit too.
ajsnigrutin 5y ago
EU banned RT.com, russia is banning facebook. If we consider putin atleast a bit a dictator, banning foreign media (=propaganda) is a thing dictators do. EU, somewhat not being considered a dictatorship, banning foreign media (=propaganda) sets a nasty precedent.
hereforphone 5y ago
To be fair Facebook products ban and censor based on ideology, which is pretty extremist in the traditional (say, 10 years ago) point of view.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > To be fair Facebook products ban and censor based on ideology, which is pretty extremist in the traditional (say, 10 years ago) point of view. All corporate media (and most media of any kind) has banned and censored based on the owner’s standards, including ideology (whether the owner’s own ideology, their perception of that of the audience or regulators they wanted to curry favor with, or some combination.) It is neither novel, nor—except to the extent that the ideology itself is—extremist for media to do that.

75 points by nixass 5y ago

imwillofficial 5y ago

Facebook allowing targeted calls for violence to one side of a conflict only had a lot to do with this decision.

chasd00 5y ago
I hope facebook's decision to allow calls for violence against the russian military makes it clear how ridiculous it is to try to define hate speech. Further, it should also be clear that what is censored on facebook will always change with the whims of facebook executives and will never be properly defined.
- happytoexplain 5y ago
  It is also impossible to draw a bright line on what counts as porn, but we don't throw up our hands and allow it everywhere. The implication that rules must have infinitely objective interpretation is farcical. Virtually no rules or laws meet this bar - it's unrealistic.
simion314 5y ago
GTFO, there is tons of Russian propaganda on FB, including fake shit but some Russian trolls get upset when social media and moderators remove provable false things.
- HKH2 5y ago
  Are you sure you're responding to the right comment? The OP was referring to Facebook allowing calls for violence against Russians. (Is that fake news?) Is your argument that Facebook doing that played no part in Russia's decision?
  - simion314 5y ago
    He was upset that FB has content only in one direction, anti-Russia. I said this is not true and I am expecting a lot of ani-Russia, anti-Putin content to exist on FB, but don't pretend that this is only one sided. Anyway , weird Putin coward and did not unplug the Internet yet, they were testing this in the past so I am wondering why still keep it, young Russian have access to the truth and this is a big danger for the war-criminal
    - freedomben 5y ago
      > He was upset that FB has content only in one direction, anti-Russia. Where did you get that? The entirety of the post I saw was: > Facebook allowing targeted calls for violence to one side of a conflict only had a lot to do with this decision. Can you point to the part where they get upset, or otherwise makes a value judgment at all?
    - HKH2 5y ago
      > He was upset that FB has content only in one direction, anti-Russia. What makes you think the OP is upset? It seems like a neutral argument to me. Did the OP edit their post?
      - simion314 5y ago
        I might have misinterpreted the comment, now is flagged, would be a good idea if OP learns to be more clear and what he means and maybe link to the event he is refering rather then assume everyone will understand his allusions. Someone linked something so I am reading that now.
        imwillofficial 5y ago
        I was exceedingly clear and neutral. Your own emotion read into words that were not there. I simply stated a fact and offered no judgement on the merits of the action.
  - freedomben 5y ago
etchalon 5y ago
Are you arguing that there's moral similarity between an invading army and people who'd prefer not to be invaded, because "well, it's violence"?
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  Do you see where I made any argument?
jdrc 5y ago
It's not like anyone feels bad for this decision
happytoexplain 5y ago
Unfortunately, regardless of any philosophy on morality, it is simply unrealistic to expect the citizens of a nation being invaded - a word applicable here without even the merest qualification - to not call for the violent repulsion of the invader, loudly and in great numbers, regardless of how "good" or "bad" the invader's justification is. Edit: To reconnect my point to the topic - the weight of millions of simultaneous lamentations under such a real, physical attack is simply heavier than the weight of a content policy of a media designed for people to talk to each other. It would be difficult, both morally and practically, to not make an exception in this case. Content policies can not be immutable, and should not be.
- VictorPath 5y ago
  Then the citizens of Donetsk should be able to call for violence against the Ukranians invading their country.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    How can Ukraine invade their own country?
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago
    Let me know when the Ukranian army crosses the frontier of the breakaway region. Until then, "the Ukranians invading their country" is rhetoric that is unconnected to reality.
    - NoGravitas 5y ago
      Okay, they've just been shelling it for the last 8 years. That's totally fine until someone puts a foot over.
      - happytoexplain 5y ago
        I think you're letting emotions migrate the topic. The implication is not that it is "fine". War is never "fine", no matter how "just". The question is that of when it becomes impossible or undesirable to police "calls for violence", which is very broad. Ownership of that area is much more controversial than the ownership of Ukraine, and the actions taken are much less dramatic. I.e. attempting to prevent separatism is much less black and white than responding to a full blown foreign invasion. However, I understand there are people who disagree with what I think is "obvious".
tomjen3 5y ago
If somebody invades your house and abducts your family you may kill them in most juristrictions I know of. They may not kill you. This is not a disagreement, twist, two parties having their point of view and stuff that we have grown up with, this is an unjustified war of aggression. The only argument we should agree to hear from the Russian side is how they will disprove the accusations of a war of aggression. Hopefully we can soon get back to behaving like civilized countries, and start the deputinization process of Russia.
- imwillofficial 5y ago
  You sound as confident of the facts as I did when I believed Saddam had WMDs. Sometimes your understanding of the world is incomplete. I would encourage an open mind, lest history make a fool of you like it did me.

NoGravitas 5y ago

JumpCrisscross 5y ago
> Technically, they are not wrong They are absolutely, technically and materially, wrong. Calls to arms to resist an invader is close to the opposite of extremism. It’s survival. A correcting force back towards the status quo. Extremism, by definition, seeks to change the status quo.
- Dharmat55 5y ago
  Politely pointing out that your argument also justifies any and all White nationalist extremism in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc in opposition to demographic replacement.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > your argument also justifies any and all White nationalist extremism in Europe, North America, Oceania, etc in opposition to demographic replacement Demographic replacement is analogised by these groups to invasion. What’s happening in Ukraine lays bare the emptiness of that analogy. Immigrants don’t bring their tanks and air force.
NullPrefix 5y ago
What do you mean "technically"?
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

MAGZine 5y ago

Something tickles me about how the country with reputation for disinformation was so quick to ban Facebook and Instagram. What do they know?

vmception 5y ago
Municipal court cases are never news. A municipal court for a district in Russia is just clickbait.
- vmception 5y ago
  Feel free to correct me if i have it wrong
jonathanstrange 5y ago
Nothing, obviously. Their disinformation campaigns of the past 15 years have failed and the priorities have shifted towards terrorizing and misinforming their own citizens.
- Gupie 5y ago
  Apart from Trump and Brexit.
  - jonathanstrange 5y ago
    I guess you're right, plus a number of far-right phenomena in the EU that were also partly caused and sponsored by Russian campaigns such as the AfD, Pegida, Front National, Lega Nord, etc. I should have said "are failing now."
    - zahllos 5y ago
      I would disagree on brexit. Am British and brexit sentiment predated the campaign by quite some time. Also many people eligible to vote for this and holding such anti EU positions were elderly, so if the Russian influence campaign was entirely online they would all have missed it. Maybe Russia funded some campaigns, not sure. Maybe they were able to sway some voters, again, not sure. But my impression is that there was already a sizeable portion of the population pro brexit. I'd be more inclined to lay this at the feet of Murdoch than Putin.

random3 5y ago

If you push the platform responsibility further you can ban anything like their cloud or their government, which are also platforms. This makes content, content author implications viral for whatever they "sit" on top.

tomc1985 5y ago

The ban will, of course, not apply to their psy-ops divisions

timonoko 5y ago

Interesting part of "Moscow Court" is that when Finland invited indigenous Finns (eg Ingrians) to move to Finland in 1990, we suddenly had enormous amount of "lawyers" (of Soviet law) moving in and attaining Finnish citizenship. Too late it was discovered that you can declare any ethnicity at any time in Soviet Union.

ainar-g 5y ago
> you can declare any ethnicity at any time in Soviet Union. If you mean the official ethnicity that Soviet people had in their internal passports, this is strictly false. The (in)famous Fifth Field has always been filled based on the parents' ethnicities. If both of one's parents were of one ethnicity (e.g. both are Tatars) then the child receives that ethnicity in their passport. If the parents belonged to two different ethnicities (e.g. a Russian mother and a Tatar father), the child was free to choose one of these two when receiving their first passport at the age of 16. See [1] (in Russian). [1]: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%8F_%D0%B3%D1%80%D0%B0%D1%84%D0%B0 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9F%D1%8F%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%8F...
timonoko 5y ago
The point is that these "Lawyers of Soviets Law" have been unemployed for 30 years enjoying 1000 euro unemployed benefits. They need to be listed ASAP and deported. And Finland is joining NATO.

freedomben 5y ago

Before we all pile on Russia, if you aren't aware of the rule change that FB made to allow violent statements against Russians (but not against any other group), you should learn about that. The Moscow Court: > A Moscow court on Monday banned Facebook and Instagram as "extremist" organizations, after authorities accused U.S. tech giant Meta of tolerating "Russophobia" during the conflict in Ukraine. And that is at least somewhat true by Facebook's own rule[1]: > “As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders’. We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians,” [2] Now that said, Russian authorities were already looking for excuses to ban (and I believe already had effectively banned FB), so it didn't really matter. But, FB played into their hands by giving them a (somewhat) legitimate reason. Note: I'm not making a value judgment here, just stating facts. [1]: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/11/facebook-and-instagram-let-users-call-for-death-to-russian-soldiers-over-ukraine https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/mar/11/facebook-... [2]: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-instagram-temporarily-allow-calls-violence-against-russians-2022-03-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/exclusive-facebook-inst...

NationalPark 5y ago
The reality is a lot narrower than you're implying, however: “We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the hate speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, except prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it’s clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (eg content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc),” ... Meta spokesman Joe Osborne previously said the company was “for the time being, making a narrow exception for praise of the Azov regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard”. Specifically the rule change that FB made to allow violent statements against Russians (but not against any other group) is an overstatement that is not factual, because it implies that violent speech toward Russians is generally tolerated on Facebook.
- freedomben 5y ago

Tenoke 5y ago

It's at least a bit more sensible than Belarus declaring Deutsche Welle extremist 2 weeks back.. https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-classifies-deutsche-welle-as-extremist/a-61088937 https://www.dw.com/en/belarus-classifies-deutsche-welle-as-e...

cf100clunk 5y ago

Nitter link if you prefer: https://nitter.pussthecat.org/MoscowTimes/status/1505914095274450949 https://nitter.pussthecat.org/MoscowTimes/status/15059140952...

eric_b 5y ago

Based on the headline alone, I'd add Twitter and Reddit too.

ajsnigrutin 5y ago

EU banned RT.com, russia is banning facebook. If we consider putin atleast a bit a dictator, banning foreign media (=propaganda) is a thing dictators do. EU, somewhat not being considered a dictatorship, banning foreign media (=propaganda) sets a nasty precedent.

hereforphone 5y ago

To be fair Facebook products ban and censor based on ideology, which is pretty extremist in the traditional (say, 10 years ago) point of view.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> To be fair Facebook products ban and censor based on ideology, which is pretty extremist in the traditional (say, 10 years ago) point of view. All corporate media (and most media of any kind) has banned and censored based on the owner’s standards, including ideology (whether the owner’s own ideology, their perception of that of the audience or regulators they wanted to curry favor with, or some combination.) It is neither novel, nor—except to the extent that the ideology itself is—extremist for media to do that.