Facebook Meta owner quickly blocks hashtags tied to Bucha murders According to Reuters

By Katie Paul

(Reuters) – The owner of Facebook (NASDAQ: Meta Platforms) has briefly restricted hashtags related to the deaths of civilians in northern Ukraine, where the bodies of people were shot at close range. was nearly found in a town seized by Russian forces, a company spokesman confirmed Monday.

The murders in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv, have prompted a pledge of further sanctions against Moscow from the West.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone said the systems that automatically scan violent images on Facebook and Instagram, which the company also owns, are responsible for blocking hashtags including #bucha and #buchamassacre.

“This happens automatically because of the graphic content people post with these hashtags. When we became aware of the issue yesterday, we acted quickly to unblock the hashtags. prefixed with #,” he wrote on Twitter (NYSE:).

Facebook and Instagram allow offensive and violent content to be posted when it is shared to raise awareness of possible human rights violations, but will remove it if it is extremely obscene or glorifies pain. suffering.

The social media company also added warning labels to some graphic posts that users had to click through before they could see the images.

Human rights groups have criticized Meta’s approach to removing violent content in conflicts, saying that the deletion of data from Meta’s servers after 90 days resulted in the deletion of important evidence about War Crimes.

Stone said Meta is “exploring ways to preserve this and other types of content as we remove it,” specifically in relation to the war in Ukraine.

Russia has denied any involvement in the killing of civilians.