San Francisco: Social media giant Facebook imposed restrictions on Russian state media’s ability to earn money on the social media platform on Friday, as Moscow’s invasion of neighboring Ukraine reached the streets of Kyiv.
‘We are now prohibiting Russian state media from running ads or monetizing on our platform anywhere in the world’, Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook security policy head, informed on Twitter. He added that Facebook would continue to apply ‘labels’ to ‘additional Russian state media’.
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Facebook’s parent company Meta had earlier said on Friday that Russia would hit its services with restrictions after it refused authorities’ order to stop using fact-checkers and content warning labels on its platforms. Social media networks have become one of the fronts in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, home to sometimes misleading information but also real-time monitoring of a quickly developing conflict that marks Europe’s biggest geopolitical crisis in decades.
Meta’s Nick Clegg said in a statement- ‘Yesterday, Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations’. ‘We refused’, he added. His statement came hours after Russian media regulator announced that it was limiting access to Facebook, accusing the US tech giant of censorship, and violating the rights of citizens of Russia.
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On Wednesday, Facebook also released a feature in Ukraine that allows people to lock their profiles for increased security, using a tool the company also deployed after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban last year. Gleicher said that Facebook had set up a Special Operations Center to monitor the situation in Ukraine in response to the’ unfolding military conflict’.
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