Meta’s Kingdom of Blindness: “Death to” Posts OK for Imam Khamenei!

By Staff, Agencies

In Meta’s kingdom of blindness, to have a one eye makes you a king.

On Tuesday, Meta, the mother company of Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, announced that it “Posts wishing death to the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution [His Eminence Imam] Sayyed Ali Khamenei are appropriate in the context of ongoing political turmoil and therefore not hate speech.”

According to this new policy, then, calling for the death of Imam Khamenei is considered a “form of political speech” but its platform, Instagram, reportedly erases posts, images and links that document “Israel’s” human rights abuses against Palestinians even when these posts are not opinions, but rather news items from credible news sources, as Human Rights Watch reported in October 2021.

This is not the first time Meta has relaxed its “hate speech” policies in response to world events.

In February 2022, the platform said it would allow users in several countries to wish death on Russian “invaders” or President Vladimir Putin, as a legitimate expression of “anger” over the conflict in Ukraine.

Moscow cited that as one of the factors for eventually designating Meta as an extremist organization, affecting Facebook and Instagram access in Russia.