Russian space agency boss compares Zuckerberg and Dorsey to Nazis after Facebook and Instagram policy change

Facebook will now allow praise of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion ‘strictly in the context of defending Ukraine’

(Twitter)

The director general of the Russian space program has compared Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg to Nazis in a tweet.

The picture, which depicts the technology chief executives in Nazi uniform with the swastika replaced with the logos of their respective companies, comes after new content moderation policies from Meta that allow calls for violence against Russians.

The social media giant, which controls Facebook and Instagram, said that it is changing its hate speech policy for countries involved in the conflict and neighbouring European countries.

The emails said calls for violence against Russians were acceptable when the post is clearly talking about the invasion of Ukraine.

Calls for violence against Russian soldiers would be considered a proxy for the Russian military, although this would not extend to prisoners of war.

In light of the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, we made a temporary exception for those affected by war, to express sentiments toward invading armed forces such as ‘’death to the Russian invaders’”, Meta said.

“These are temporary measures designed to preserve voice and expression for people who are facing invasion. As always, we are prohibiting calls for violence against Russians outside of the narrow context of the current invasion.”

Twitter, meanwhile, removed two posts by the Russian embassy in London that claimed the bombing of a Ukrainian hospital had been staged, saying the tweets violated rules "related to the denial of violent events".

In response Dimitry Rogozin, who has been the head of Roscosmos since 2018, shared the photo with the caption: “At a meeting on organizing hatred for the Russian people.”

Russia’s claim has always been that the invasion of Ukraine is for the purpose of ‘de-Nazification’. While this propaganda has been used numerous times by Russia to justify its invasions, the Ukrainian government under former president Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian government is alleged to have given funding for the far-right group C14 to promote “national patriotic education projects”.

Moreover, infamous Azov battalion has admitted to recruiting neo-Nazis and is currently being armed in the fight against Russia.

However, current president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky is Jewish and lost family members in the Holocaust, and there is little evidence that extremist far-right ideologies are prominent with the everyday citizens of Ukraine.

Nevertheless, Facebook said it was “for the time being, making a narrow exception for praise of the Azov Regiment strictly in the context of defending Ukraine, or in their role as part of the Ukraine National Guard”.

Facebook and Twitter are banned in Russia as part of a crackdown on information outside of the country.

The Independent has contacted Roscosmos for comment.