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Russia Asks Court To Label Facebook, Instagram as 'Extremist' (bloomberg.com) 91

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Russian prosecutors have asked a court to ban Meta Platforms's Facebook and Instagram as "extremist," Interfax reported, the latest move in a growing crackdown on social networks. From a report: Authorities blocked access to Facebook last week under a new media law, but the "extremist" designation, if approved by a court, would effectively criminalize all of Meta's operations in Russia. The company's Instagram app would also be blocked. The move comes amid increasing tension between Moscow and U.S. tech companies. Earlier Friday, the speaker of the lower house of parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, called on prosecutors to investigate Meta after Reuters reported that the company had temporarily eased internal restrictions on calling for violence against Russian soldiers due to the invasion of Ukraine. Russia has already banned certain social media companies like Facebook and Twitter, while tech companies have demonetized Russian state-sponsored media and blocked them in Europe.
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Russia Asks Court To Label Facebook, Instagram as 'Extremist' More

Russia Asks Court To Label Facebook, Instagram as 'Extremist'

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  • fine with me

  • Russia likely plans to use bioweapons in Ukraine, accuses Ukraine of manufacturing bioweapons. If there are or more likely were bioweapons labs in Ukraine, they were built by the USSR.

    Russia loved to use Facebook and IG to meddle in American politics through advertising and paid trolling. But now that they're sharing facts about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they're "extremist". Well, if they're extremist, it's because Russia contributed to that, too.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      If Russia did ban Facebook it would be a great opportunity for Facebook to reject all connections from Russian IP address. I'm sure the Internet Research Agency would use VPNs, but it's another layer of hassle because multiple users all on the same IP address, or group of IP addresses, are quite easy to spot.

      • Russia has already done that. About a week ago. I don't know what more they think they could actually do to Facebook. They blocked Twitter too.

        • No. Facebook was actually banned today.

          For a reason too. Slashdot as usually is being disingenuous.

          Facebook is banned for allowing, supporting and promoting calls to kill Russians. As a nationality. For the fact that they are russians. They did it in a list of Eastern European countries: https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]

          Calling for the extermination of a nationality is extremist. It is in the Eu, UK and USA for that matter. Up to 7 years jail term. While FB has been rowing back on that and trying to w

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dasunt ( 249686 )

            Facebook is banned for allowing, supporting and promoting calls to kill Russians. As a nationality. For the fact that they are russians. They did it in a list of Eastern European countries: https://www.reuters.com/world/ [reuters.com]...

            You dropped a word: Facebook is allowing threats to kill Russian invaders.

            They specifically stated that they will not allow threats against Russian civilians.

          • In the anglosphere, it's very, very common to refer to Russian government officials and military personnel as just "Russians" or "the Russians". It's a thin line for sure, but because that is so common it would often be hard to tell the difference. People do this so habitually that they'd probably end up banning half of facebook if they banned everybody for saying that. See the video in my signature for example. That cartoon has had Russian characters in it before, and I don't think they'd be the ones he is

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by igny ( 716218 )
        Re: it would be a great opportunity for Facebook to reject all connections from Russian IP address

        Why do you think that something of value would be lost for the Russians?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by darkain ( 749283 )

        Or users would revert to Tor (assuming that entire network is not blocked). Facebook has supported Tor directly for many years now.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Moreover, this shows that they know in how far stuff can be used against you, talking from experience and now being on the receiving end...
    • Give me one good military reason for this.

      1. They have half of the Ukrainian army locked up in Kiev, Kharkov and Dnipro. They cannot show up outside the city because the crocodiles (the flying variety) and "rooks" (the jet ones, not the birds) rips them apart.Ukraine has no airforce and no air defences left. While Kiev still has some minimal air defence remnants, Mariupol, Chernigov, Kharkiv are all now streamed nearly 24x7 from the air. With coordinates and cross-hairs on remaining Ukrainian hardware.

      2

      • why would they use biological, chemical or any other non-conventional weapons

        For the same reason they invaded Ukraine for. It's a show of force for Putin and Russia. The goal is not military, but political. I don't think Russia's plan is to conquer Ukraine - the goal is to scare the rest of the world into submission. To show Russia has no limits - it won't respect countries, laws, promises or basic morality. Everybody better do what the madman asks, or else.

        Basically, the Russian strategy appears to be terror. It's not a war anymore: what they're committing are terrorist actions on

  • Ah (Score:3)

    by cascadingstylesheet ( 140919 ) on Friday March 11, 2022 @09:15AM (#62347409) Journal

    after Reuters reported that the company had temporarily eased internal restrictions on calling for violence against Russian soldiers due to the invasion of Ukraine.

    Ah. So actual calls for violence on Facebook are okay ... as long as they are approved.

    Imaginary, supposed "calls for violence" that just happen to be from our political opponents, however ... not so much.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      after Reuters reported that the company had temporarily eased internal restrictions on calling for violence against Russian soldiers due to the invasion of Ukraine.

      Ah. So actual calls for violence on Facebook are okay ... as long as they are approved.

      Imaginary, supposed "calls for violence" that just happen to be from our political opponents, however ... not so much.

      The difference between the two is whether the violence is legal or not.

      Killing or assaulting a random person is, generally speaking, illegal anywhere in the world. Advocating violence, therefore, should reasonably be banned.

      By contrast, from an international law perspective, soldiers on the battlefield are fair game. Thus, Ukrainians, whether civilian or military, have a legal right to take any action, from firearms and machetes to pipe bombs in an effort to defend themselves and their nation's sovereignt

      • So you are fine with Taliban types calling for violence against US Soldiers ??
        Or Iran, North Korea ?

        • That's called "war", son. I'm not okay with war, as such, but once it happens, this is HOW it happens.

          I'm a lot less okay with attacks on civilians, for obvious reasons. Even then, anyone who tells you that their army will only attack 'military' targets is trying to sell you something.

      • The difference between the two is whether the violence is legal or not.

        Killing or assaulting a random person is, generally speaking, illegal anywhere in the world. Advocating violence, therefore, should reasonably be banned.

        By contrast, from an international law perspective, soldiers on the battlefield are fair game. Thus, Ukrainians, whether civilian or military, have a legal right to take any action, from firearms and machetes to pipe bombs in an effort to defend themselves and their nation's sovereignty against a foreign invader (with the obvious caveat that exercising that right likely makes them combatants, and thus also fair game).

        It's basically the difference between calling for the death of a serial killer on death row and calling for the death of Vice President Mike Pence. One gets you nods of agreement; the other gets you many years in jail.

        There are several ways to slice this argument.

        A different way is to say that calls to violence are allowed, unless the calls lead the target to reasonably believe that they are in actual danger. So calling for the deaths of a specific group would be allowed, while calling for the death of a specific person by name is not. As an example, many people are calling for the deaths of the Jan 6 protestors, as execution for treason. This is allowed, since there is no reasonable expectation that this puts any of the

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by knaapie ( 214889 )

        In case of soldiers on the battlefield you may be right. People should be able to defend themselves against aggressors, and, within the EULA of social media, use social media to express their feelings about that.
        However, the EULA of FB is probably more strict than international law, so I suspect that even when at war, you are not allowed to call for the death of anyone on FB.
        Also, FB is an international platform. Since I am not in Ukraine, I am not at war with Russia and I should probably not be able to cal

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by dgatwood ( 11270 )

          In case of soldiers on the battlefield you may be right. People should be able to defend themselves against aggressors, and, within the EULA of social media, use social media to express their feelings about that.

          However, the EULA of FB is probably more strict than international law, so I suspect that even when at war, you are not allowed to call for the death of anyone on FB.

          That's kind of orthogonal. The original poster implied that FB's reason for being lax in enforcing that part of its terms of services was that there were certain specific groups of people that FB considered okay to threaten. The point of my post was that it is entirely plausible to explain FB's decision to be lax about this without FB taking sides on any particular issue, based solely on the legality of the action advocated.

  • It seems like Facebook has outlived it's usefulness in the eyes of the Russian government.

    • Naw, I am pretty sure they will use it as much as they can in the West, they simply do not want Facebook spreading reality inside of Russia

  • Facebook responsible for 94% of 69 million child sex abuse images reported by US tech firms
    https://news.sky.com/story/fac... [sky.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by splutty ( 43475 )

      People posting on Facebook responsible...

      There. Fixed that for you. Facebook never took pictures of child sex abuse.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by nagora ( 177841 )

        Facebook responsible for publishing its readers' images of child sex abuse...

        There. Fixed that for you. Facebook never took pictures of child sex abuse, they just published them to the widest audience possible. For profit.

      • To be fair, I wouldn't put that past Facebook if they could legally get away with it. You're talking about what is arguably the most unethical company on the planet here.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fazig ( 2909523 )
      I agree that facebook is like a cancer, yes.

      So for the fun of it, let's try using the typical Kremlin catch-all-reasoning of whataboutisms to turn back the criticism on the one who started it, in order to make their moral intentions questionable:
      What about all the time before? With all the sex abuse images on there, the Kremlin was fine with that.
      So why does the Kremlin suddenly no longer like it? What changed that made facebook worse than child sex abuse images?


      A rhetorical question.

    • Facebook responsible for 94% of 69 million child sex abuse images reported by US tech firms
      https://news.sky.com/story/fac... [sky.com]

      So one of the companies actively reporting child abuse images is showing up highly in lists of places where child sex abuse images come from? *surprisedpikachuface*.

      What's your next revelation, that 99% of people speeding get reported by speed cameras? Fuck me backwards you're a brain!

  • Finally, the Macho Munchkin gets something right.

  • It is highly dangerous to allow a company as big as Meta to get into the game of saying "the rules don't apply because this case is specially" (for reasons that amount to an unprincipled exception).

    If the timeline were different and Bush were in office now and taking out Saddam Hussein, I can guarantee that Facebook would not allow "death to the American invaders" from across Eurasian services."

    S230 is not a constitutional right. It's a legal privilege. The SCOTUS has consistently differentiated between S23

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by skam240 ( 789197 )

      Gotta love shit like this. I imagine in your head there's no glaring contradiction in being in favor of stuff like this while also supporting the Republican party, the party of small government.

  • Fuck Putin, but he's not wrong here. I've personally good-hearted family members get radicalized by Facebook's algorithms. Juicing the masses up on hate filled posts makes FB $ billions. We'd have a healtheir society if our government recognized this problem and did something to address it.

    • I agree with everything you say. If FB literally turned into a smoking crater tomorrow, I'd dance like a Viking in the ashes.

      What I can't figure out is how the government being involved would help. Other than making FB follow its own policies, or allow people to sue them for damages when it can be shown that they caused harm.

      Look at what the GOP is trying to do now - legislation to force FB and others to continue to spread proven lies.

      I agree with you 100% - I just don't see any way for the govt to do any g

  • While I condemn Russia actions in Ukraine, this is actually a positive development. Facebook and Instagram have grown to become a toxic mess.

  • Why don't you just let the court label the rest of the world as extremist? After all, you are right about everything, and nothing you say is a lie.

    And for the Chinese people reading this, Putin's humanitarian mission is of the same calibre as the Japanese humanitarian mission was from 1931 to 1945 in Manchuria. The Chinese politicians/members of the CCP (there are probably no other ones) have proven that they don't possess one atom of humanity, and that they do not care about the Chinese people.

  • What I like about this is it undermines the effectiveness of the "extremist" slur.

    (That said, I still hate Pooty Poot on his own merits.)

  • This is one thing I think the whole world could agree on with Russia these days.


  • ...free speech is extreme.

    You better not be thinking any thoughts the Kremlin hasn't approved. They might just disappear you into some Siberian work camp.

    It's because thinking for yourself and calling them out for invading another country and bombing hospitals is "extreme"...in soviet Russia.

  • If they won't let us talk to their citizens, why should we let their propaganda services talk to us.

  • Yeah sure we all love to hate on Facebook, but think about the real implications here. What happens with Russian employees working for FB? will they be labeled as terrorists? Does that pose a security risk for them now or in the future? What about Russian employees working in countries with an extradition treaty with Russia?

    And don't come saying "well, they deserve it for working at Facebook". No one deserves this for going into work everyday to a company which, as much as you dislike it, is conducting lega

  • Sounds like US conservatives crying that social media is "bias" against them. The reality is, at the moment the US is center right (36% conservative, 35% moderate, 25% liberal) https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
    So when the extreme reichwingers proselytize their fascism (like the daily garbage of FauxNoise) , the majority of Americans are not with them.
  • This is the pot calling the kettle black.

    • Hey, deliberate targeted bombing of maternity wards is caused by a legitimate security concern about the threat of Ukraine developing nuclear capability...

      ohh. ffs.

      Ukraine gets a quarter of its electricity from its nuclear power plants. It's literally been nuclear-capable since the first day it became a country.

      But, but, but... NATO !!! Aha! You know what I mean, you know what I mean?!

  • It should be

    Russia "asks" "court" to label Facebook, Instagram as "Extremists."

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