Facebook’s parent, Meta has stepped up a special team to deal with hate speech and misinformation related to Ukraine. This decision was made following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict as Russia declared war on the country.
The announcement was made known by Meta’s President of Global Affairs, Nick Clegg through his Twitter handle, where he said, “The situation in Ukraine is devastating. Our teams at Meta have implemented a number of measures to keep our platforms and our users in the region as safe as we can. We’ve established a Special Operations Center, staffed by experts and native speakers, to respond in real time to remove hate speech or content that incites violence or otherwise breaks our rules.”
“We’re taking extensive steps to fight the spread of misinformation, and labelling content from state-controlled media and content that fact-checkers have rated false. And our cybersecurity teams are monitoring closely for coordinated attempts to abuse our platform. This is a fast-moving situation and our teams remain on high alert,” he added.
The company also added a feature for its Ukraine-based users, allowing them to lock their accounts and add extra security to limit access to their accounts.
The idea behind this act is to ensure that nothing is being put out in the media to increase violence or incite hateful acts from the people. The company’s Cyber Security team is also monitoring any attempts of abuse from affiliated platforms in order to shut it down immediately and prevent it from getting into mainstream media.
Meanwhile, this is not the first time Meta has used a specialized team to respond to a geopolitical crisis. In August 2021, after the Taliban group seized power in Afghanistan, Meta used a group of experts to monitor contents related to the event, resulting to the removal of Myanma Military’s main page for violating its rule on incitement of violence.
The Russian government has launched several attacks on Ukraine, several armoured trucks have been spotted in Kyiv the capital city, Ukrainians and Ukraine residents are attempting to flee the country as men aged between 18 to 60 years are being prevented from leaving the country,
