Russia moves to categorize Facebook's parent company Meta as an 'extremist organization'



Russian authorities have called for Facebook's parent company Meta to be categorized as an "extremist organization," according to an Interfax report.

Earlier this month, Russia reportedly banned access to Facebook. Now, Russia's prosecutor general's office is attempting to label Facebook's parent company as an "extremist organization."

Last week, Facebook temporarily allowed users to post threats to Vladimir Putin and the Russian military forces involved in the invasion of Ukraine.

Now, Russia has declared the parent company of Facebook to be an "extremist organization," while also restricting access to the Instagram application.

Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor claimed, "Messages shared on Instagram encourage and provoke violent actions toward Russians."

On Monday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri responded to the social media block: "This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as ~80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong."

Meanwhile, Facebook has enabled users to temporarily express violent posts calling for the death of Vladimir Putin and Russian military forces.

Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said, "Our policies are focused on protecting people's rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country. The fact is, if we applied our standard content policies without any adjustments we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which would rightly be viewed as unacceptable."

"We have no quarrel with the Russian people a d will not tolerate Russophobia or any kind of discrimination, harassment or violence towards Russians on our platform," Clegg added.

Meanwhile, Russia has made a crackdown on anti-war demonstrations and reportedly arrested nearly 800 people in 37 Russian cities.

Woman says she was virtually 'groped' in Facebook's VR metaverse, investigation launched



A woman claims she was virtually "groped" in a virtual reality world, and an investigation has been launched. A female believes she was the victim of sexual harassment while testing out a virtual world from Meta – the company formerly known as Facebook.

The alleged victim was a beta tester on the VR platform "Horizon Worlds" – a "social experience where you can explore, play and create." The virtual world allows users to "design worlds of your own or get to know other members of the community and be inspired by their creations." The virtual reality metaverse offers "interactive puzzles" and "action-packed games."

The woman claims she was virtually "groped" during the testing period on Nov. 26.

Tech blog The Verge was the first to report the incident:

Safety is a big concern for a VR environment like Horizon Worlds, where you can easily interact with someone you don’t know. Earlier this month, a beta tester posted in the official Horizon group on Facebook about how her avatar was groped by a stranger. “Sexual harassment is no joke on the regular internet, but being in VR adds another layer that makes the event more intense,” she wrote. “Not only was I groped last night, but there were other people there who supported this behavior which made me feel isolated in the Plaza.”

Following the woman's allegation that she was virtually "groped," Meta launched an investigation into the incident. The company – formerly known as Facebook – determined that the tester did not activate a safety feature designed to prevent harassment on the platform.

Vivek Sharma – Meta's Vice President of Horizon – called the incident "absolutely unfortunate," and admitted that the tech company needs to work on making the safety blocking feature "trivially easy and findable."

The "Safe Zone" option allows users who feel threatened to press the "blue shield button" that "takes you to Safe Zone, where you can escape and take a break."

"We want everyone in Horizon Worlds to have a positive experience with safety tools that are easy to find—and it’s never a user's fault if they don’t use all the features we offer," Meta spokesperson Kristina Milian told MIT Technology Review. "We will continue to improve our UI and to better understand how people use our tools so that users are able to report things easily and reliably. Our goal is to make Horizon Worlds safe, and we are committed to doing that work."

On December 9, Meta opened up Horizon Worlds to users aged 18 and above in North America.