Happy Nice Mall

MetaThe owner of Facebook and Instagram took an unusual step last week: It suspended certain quality controls that ensure posts from users in Russia, Ukraine and other Eastern European countries follow its rules.

As part of the change, Meta has temporarily stopped monitoring whether its employees, who monitor Facebook and Instagram posts in these areas, are following the content rules correctly, six people familiar with the situation said. This is because workers, they said, could not keep up with changing rules about what types of posts about the war in Ukraine are allowed.

Meta has made more than half a dozen content policy revisions since then. Russia invaded Ukraine last month. Before the company changed its mind or drafted new guidelines, it allowed posts about the conflict it would normally remove, including the death of Russian President Vladimir V. Putin and calls for violence against Russian soldiers.

The result has been an uproar among content moderators, who patrol Facebook and Instagram for text and images that contain violence, hate speech, and incitement to violence. People who are not authorized to speak in public said that Meta sometimes changes its rules daily, which causes whiplash.

Confusion over content guidelines is only one way Meta has been shaken by the war in Ukraine. The company also dealing with pressure Information warfare about the conflict from Russian and Ukrainian authorities. And internally, he said he has dealt with dissatisfaction with his decisions, including Russian employees who are concerned about their safety and Ukrainian workers who want the company to be tougher on Kremlin affiliates online.

Meta has weathered international contention before. Genocide of a Muslim minority in Myanmar last ten years and Conflicts between India and Pakistan – with varying degrees of success. Now, the biggest conflict on the European continent since WWII has become a litmus test of whether the company has learned to audit its platforms during major global crises – and so far, it appears to be a work in progress.

“All the components of the Russia-Ukraine conflict have been around for a long time: calls for violence, disinformation, propaganda from the state media,” said David Kaye, professor of law at the University of California at Irvine. Former special rapporteur of the United Nations. “What I found mysterious was the lack of a game plan to deal with it.”

Meta spokesperson Dani Lever declined to directly address how the company handled content decisions and employee concerns during the war.

After Russia invaded Ukraine, Meta said it set up a 24-hour special operations team of native Russian and Ukrainian-speaking staff. It has also updated its products to assist civilians in warfare, including features that guide Ukrainians to reliable, verified information for finding housing and refugee aid.

Mark ZuckerbergSheryl Sandberg, Meta’s CEO and chief of operations, was directly involved in the response to the war, said two people with knowledge of the effort. But as Mr. Zuckerberg focused converting meta to a company that will lead the so-called digital worlds metadata storeMany conflict-related responsibilities—at least publicly— Nick Cleggpresident of global affairs.

Last month, Mr. Clegg announced Meta will restrict access to pages within the European Union Russia today and Sputnik, the Russian state-controlled media, following the demands of Ukrainian and other European governments. Russia retaliated. blocking access to facebook domestically, alleging that the company discriminated against Russian media, and subsequently blocking Instagram.

This month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky the lauded Meta For moving quickly to limit Russian war propaganda on its platforms. Meta was also quick to remove an edited “deepfake”. video From their platform, which falsely shows that Mr. Zelensky bowed to Russian forces.

The company also made high-profile mistakes. allowed A group called the Ukrainian Legion Posting ads on their platform this month to recruit “foreigners” for the Ukrainian military, international laws. According to Meta, the group later removed ads shown to people in the US, Ireland, Germany and elsewhere because the group may have misrepresented its ties to the Ukrainian government.

Internally, Meta had also begun tweaking its content policies to deal with the fast-moving nature of war-related posts. The company has long-banned posts that may incite violence. But on February 26, two days after Russia invaded Ukraine, Meta informed the content moderators. typically contractors – According to policy changes reviewed by The New York Times, it will allow Putin’s death calls and “calls for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the occupation of Ukraine.”

This month, Reuters Report on Meta’s shifts a title this suggested that posts calling for violence against all Russians would be tolerated. In response, the Russian authorities denied Meta’s activities “extremist”

Soon after, Meta reversed course and said it would not allow its users to claim the death of heads of state.

Mr Clegg, reviewed by The Times and first Bloomberg. “We try to consider all the implications and keep our guidance under constant review as the context is always changing.”

Meta changed other policies. This month it made a temporary exception to hate speech guidelines so users can post about “expulsion of Russians” and “outright exclusion against Russians” in 12 Eastern European countries, according to internal documents. But within a week, Meta changed the rule to specify that it should only apply to users in Ukraine.

Six people with knowledge of the situation said they were confused by the constant regulations of moderators monitoring users in Central and Eastern European countries.

The policy changes were cumbersome because moderators were often given less than 90 seconds to decide whether pictures of corpses, videos with limbs blown off, or outright calls for violence violated Meta’s rules. They added that in some cases, moderators were shown posts about the war in Chechen, Kazakh, or Kyrgyz even though they did not know these languages.

Ms. Lever declined to comment on whether Meta is hiring content moderators who specialize in these languages.

Emerson T. Brooking, a senior researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, which studies the spread of disinformation online, said Meta faces a dilemma regarding its combat content.

“Usually, content moderation policy aims to limit violent content,” he said. “But war is an exercise of violence. There’s no way to sterilize war or pretend it’s something different.”

Meta has also faced employee complaints about policy changes. At a meeting this month for workers with ties to Ukraine, employees asked why the company was waiting until war. Move on Against Russia Today and Sputnik, said two people involved. The Russian state was at the center of its activity. Facebook’s failure To protect the 2016 US presidential election, they said, and it didn’t make sense for these outlets to continue working on Meta’s platforms.

While Meta has no employees in Russia, the company held a separate meeting for Russia-related workers this month. These employees said they were concerned that Moscow’s actions against the company would affect them, according to an internal document.

In discussions on Meta’s internal forums, viewed by The Times, some Russian employees said they deleted their workplace from their online profiles. Others wondered what would happen if they worked in corporate offices where the company had an extradition treaty to Russia, and “what kind of risks would working at Meta be associated with, not just for us but for our families.”

“Our hearts go out to all our employees affected by the war in Ukraine, and our teams are working to make sure they and their families have the support they need,” Lever said of Meta.

At a separate company meeting this month, some employees expressed dissatisfaction with changes to speech policies during the war, according to an internal survey. Some asked if the new rules were necessary, describing the changes as a “slippery slope” “used as proof that Westerners hate Russians”.

Others have asked about Meta’s impact on his business. “Will the Russian ban affect our revenue this quarter? Next quarters?” read a question. “What is our recovery strategy?”