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Andy Stone, press secretary for Facebook parent Meta, has been put on Russia’s criminal wanted list, the country’s state-owned news agency reported yesterday (Nov. 26).
The reason Stone was added to the list wasn’t explicitly stated in the TASS story, which cited data from the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. The authorities only said that he’s “wanted under an article of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation.”
Even though it only just became public knowledge, Stone has been on the wanted list since February, independent Russian news site Mediazona reported. And in mid-November, the Meta communications director of nearly a decade was “arrested” in absentia for “aiding terrorism,” according to the anti-Putinist publication.
Why is Meta’s Andy Stone wanted in Russia?
Soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Stone announced temporary changes to Meta’s hate speech policy to allow for “forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules, like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’”
The bent rules only applied to Facebook and Instagram users in select countries—Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine. “Credible calls for violence against Russian civilians” remained banned, Stone emphasized. Likewise, calls for Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s assassination weren’t allowed.
Still, this leniency didn’t go down well with Russia, which blocked Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and more. The Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case into these calls for violence and murder, and Russian authorities deemed Meta a “terrorist and extremist” organization, opening up the company and its employees to legal action.
Several US- and European-owned communication platforms, such as X, Snapchat, Discord, Telegram, and Microsoft Teams, are still banned from Russia and remain accessible only through virtual private networks (VPNs).
A brief timeline of Russia vs. Meta
Feb. 8, 2022: Russia invades Ukraine.
March 4, 2022: Facebook is blocked in Russia even before user rules are changed.
March 11, 2022: Stone announces that Meta’s rules around “political expression” against the Russian military have been relaxed. The Russian embassy to the US lashes out against the company’s “aggressive and criminal policy leading to incitement of hatred and hostility towards Russians.” The Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation asks the court to recognize Meta as an extremist organization and ban its activities in Russia for violating articles 280 and 205.1 of the Russian criminal code—public calls to carry out extremist activities, and assisting terrorist activities.
March 14, 2022: Russia blocks Instagram, Meta’s photo- and video-sharing app.
March 21, 2022: Meta’s plea for more time to respond to the authorities is rejected, and a Moscow court deems the company an “extremist organization.” Facebook and Instagram are outlawed by this ruling, but WhatsApp remains available because it isn’t a public platform.
April 21, 2022: Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg is sanctioned, barring him from entering Russia.
June 1, 2023: WhatsApp gets slapped with its first fine in Russia—3 million roubles (about $34,000)—for not deleting banned content.
Sept. 25, 2023: Meta drops its plans to launch WhatsApp Channels, a one-way broadcast tool, in Russia after authorities warn that prohibited information appearing in public channels could lead to a WhatsApp ban.
Place of interest: Iran
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine doesn’t mark the first time Meta has tweaked its hate speech policy. In July 2021, the firm temporarily allowed posts calling for “death to Khamenei”—referring to Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Hosseini Khamenei—during water crisis protests.
Last year, the slogan once again picked up during anti-hijab protests sparked by 22-year-old Mahsa Amini’s “violent arrest” and death in custody for infringing hijab rules. Meta has gone back and forth on allowing it.
The company’s Oversight Board, an independent body of thought leaders around the world that handles appeals of content decisions made on Facebook or Instagram, favors the anti-government chant. In June, the board overturned Meta’s decision to ban a controversial cartoon—an image depicting Khamenei’s beard forming a fist grasping a woman in a hijab, captioned “death to” the government and its leader—citing the newsworthiness allowance.
Quotable: Russia’s impending internet information blackout
“Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, most major platforms, such as Facebook and Instagram, have been banned in Russia. Only two major platforms have partially survived the purge for now: Telegram and YouTube are the only spaces left for Russian journalists to try to inform their fellow citizens about the reality of the war waged in their name by Vladimir Putin. As [the 2024 election] campaign season approaches, we have strong suspicions that YouTube and Telegram could be totally blocked in Russia as soon as this autumn, making more than 140 million people hostages of the state’s propaganda apparatus.
We do not want to live in a new Cold War era. There is an urgent need to reconnect Russian citizens with pluralistic information, and with the rest of the world. It is the essence of the Internet to provide this function. The major services you are in charge of have become the main actors of this mission: social networks, search engines, and app marketplaces are the gateways to an open informational world. It is essential to reinstate them; otherwise, Russian citizens will find themselves locked in the dark alone with their president. Technical solutions that would allow your services to come back or remain online in Russia already exist. An ‘Engineers against Dictatorship’ alliance could develop them.”
—Reporters Without Borders (RSF), Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dmitry Muratov, who runs Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta, and other independent Russian media organizations and journalists, in a June 8 letter to Big Tech leaders. The recipients include Apple CEO Tim Cook, YouTube chief Neal Mohan, X head honcho Elon Musk, Microsoft leader Satya Nadella, Google person-in-command Sundar Pichai, LinkedIn boss Ryan Roslansky, and—of course—Meta supremo Mark Zuckerberg
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