Meta Allows Hate Speech Against Russians Invading Ukraine — Report

According to a report published by Reuters, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ: FB) has temporarily allowed the users of its Instagram and Facebook platforms to post hate speech against invading Russians, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The company has also allowed posts with death threats to the Presidents of Russia and Belarus.

A Meta spokesperson said, “As a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine we have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to the Russian invaders.’ We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”

This temporary change in Meta’s hate speech policy is applicable in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine.

Criticizing the company and asking the U.S. government to stop Meta’s “extremist activities,” the Russian Embassy in the U.S. said, “Users of Facebook and Instagram did not give the owners of these platforms the right to determine the criteria of truth and pit nations against each other.”

Russia banned Facebook last week after Meta restricted the Russian media’s access to the platform.

California-based Meta is one of the biggest IT companies in the world. Its offerings include WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, Facebook Watch, Facebook Portal, Oculus, Giphy, Mapillary and Kustomer, among others.

FB stock closed 1.7% lower on Thursday. It lost another 0.2% in after-hours trading to end the day at $194.80. However, the stock was trading 0.4% up in the pre-market session on Friday at the time of writing.

Analysts’ Take

Recently, Thomas Champion of Piper Sandler (NYSE: PIPR) maintained a Neutral rating on the stock and lowered the price target to $240 from $301 (23% upside potential).

Champion said that following Meta’s “dismal” guidance for the first quarter, challenges for its advertising business are expected to continue until August, along with a slowdown in the growth of daily active users and uptake of its short-form video platform Reels.

Additionally, Arete Research analyst Rocco Strauss reiterated a Hold rating on Meta and cut the price target from $381 to $220 (12.7% upside potential).

In a research note to investors, Strauss said, “Meta must ramp both engagement and monetization of longer-form video assets and quickly move the metaverse from concept to mass market for the shares to move higher.”

Overall, the stock has a Moderate Buy consensus rating based on 31 Buys, 13 Holds and 1 Sell. The average FB price target of $326.93 implies 67.5% upside potential. Shares have lost 44.7% over the past six months.

Website Traffic

TipRanks’ Website Traffic Tool, which uses data from SEMrush Holdings (NYSE: SEMR), the world’s biggest website usage monitoring service, offers insight into Meta’s performance.

According to the tool, compared to the previous year, Meta’s website traffic registered a 5.7% decline in global visits in February. Moreover, the website traffic has decreased 7.4% year-to-date against the same period last year.

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