some teachers who are qualified and assigned to government schools prefer to teach private institutions to be able to earn more income. that creates a shortage and government runs. schools and kids tend to miss out on classes. but we're working to address that as well as trying to set up schools and all of tell these around the country and ensure kids go to school that assess if the school sets up in can do. she will send her children to it. but she says she hopes that when and if one is built, her economic conditions will have improved so that she won't need their help to put food on the table. he will morgan algebra in jemina. ah, it's take you through the latest developments then ukraine is married. post city council says almost 1600 civilians have been killed by russian shilling. the city has been under siege for 12 days and there are no reports of looting. is trapped, residence fight over food and water. jonah whole has the latest from the even west

and ukraine in about a week of evacuation corridors operating we're told 487000 people have been taken out of very dangerous areas including a 100000 children. but one place that hasn't had any respite and i'm afraid it appears, continues not to have had on saturdays. of course, maria poll at the southern black sea port city 400000 people who live there. it's been besieged, bombarded for 12 days. now the mayor has described conditions in that city as medieval people running out of food medicine, water, and existing without heat in dreadful conditions. a convoy that tried to make its way to mario pole, bringing food and medicines, and loads of empty buses that might have turned around and escaped for the people didn't get into the city as far as we know. because of reports of ongoing fighting, the capital keys has been hit by explosions and gunfire while fighting intensifies on the outskirts. thousands of people are trying to flee as russian forces edge

closer to the city, but president zelinski is warned. russian forces. i want to take keith and they would have to raise it to the ground. the original mare of done yet. so the town of val, nevada, has been destroyed. this is what is from fido showing the heavy damage already inflicted by russian forces. fighting as reported, they still on going to stop any further russian advances in the eastern region and further, south ukrainian forces, a passing russian troops on several fronts. this is odessa where people have been using sandbags to fortify the city against a possible attack. still under ukrainian control, it has been spared the fighting so far. but as a major port city many think it's only a matter of time before russia launches and a sold by land or c. i will see for the news hour in about 25 minutes time, but right now inside story with adrian finnegan on counting the cost, the us fans washing oil and the you to shrink its reliance on russian gas or high

prices undermine global energy security. how sanctions against moscow are pattering the asian industry and reeling from food shortages and power cuts or shawl anchored fault on it's dense. counting the cost on al jazeera, some facebook uses cannot call for violence against russian soldiers. they're even allowed to call for vladimir putin. his death, that's up to the company tweak to take speech policy and response to the war in ukraine. but what are the consequences? this is inside story. ah, ah. hello, welcome to the program. i'm adrian finnegan. matter, the company that owns facebook and instagram could soon be banned in russia as an extremist organization. the kremlin announced that it's blocking instagram

a move that will affect some 80000000 users. now this is all in response to meta announcing a change in its hate speech policy, allowing violent posts in some instances. that's now a partial exemption. when the targets a russian soldiers in ukraine matters decision is part of a wave of corporate action against the russian invasion of ukraine. a spokesman for the company says that its platforms will continue to ban violent posts against russian civilians. will his part of the statement from matters global affairs president nick clag. he says our policies of focused on protecting people's rights to speech as an expression of self defense and reaction to a military invasion of their country. to be clear, we're only going to apply this policy in ukraine itself. we have no quarrel with the russian people. ah, so my to discuss, let's bring in our guests for to day from london, we're joined by massa, alma donnie,

who's an internet researcher of the oxford internet institute from preston. lancashire, amy bins is senior lecturer and digital journalism at the university of central lancashire. and in london, tim squirrel had of communications and editorial at the institute for strategic dialogue. are welcome to you all muscle. let's start with you. are matters changes to its hate speech policy. here, a perfectly reasonable reaction to russia's actions in ukraine or something chillingly dangerous. i mean, i would answer that question by looking at what kind of precedent matter has and applying its policies consistently. i mean, we have other countries where we have had russian forces invade, we have the same thing occurring in syria. however, this exception has not been made for syrians. i mean, there's a host of countries that can make these kinds of calls and faced these exceptions. i armenia, ukraine, poland, lithuania, there's

a host of these countries. none of them include syria. so, and this is part and parcel of a lot of policies receive inconsistencies in the application of these. another, i mean, frightening thing to consider is the fact that why do we want to be calling, making threats against russian soldiers. there is, i mean, this is something the former united nation special repertoire said, which is you would want russian soldiers to have a culture where they can just a fact and withdraw from this war not to be further demonized. so it's very concerning what kind of implications is, can have and what kind of evidence for the benefits this kind of policy can have. a me mentor is effect free decreeing that some people are just so terrible, but it's okay for us to say violent and threatening things to that. it has the power to decide who we can use such language against, isn't it?

yeah, and i think that's really interesting point that for very, very many years on facebook and the other big social media companies have avoided regulation on the grounds that they're just platforms and not have alicia's. there just platforms where people go and say wherever they lie, and facebook or instagram, or twitter and not responsible, what people say. but what we're seeing here is facebook is making an added tauriel judgment. they're behaving like a publisher just the same way as a newspaper says, we'll publish this read this letter and we won't publish that read a letter. and i think in the long term, what we can see is more evidence that these are not really just platforms at all. they are very large, powerful media businesses and they are publishers make mandatory of judgments. term a good to you, you nodding the matter matter effectively saying here, but it's,

it's perfectly reasonable. it's ok to single out people from one country on one country alone and gives them the green light for what amounts to hate speech. what are the implications on flat the difficulty here is that this is a. ready report to the result of a single league of a single carve outs and facebook mess has historically been extremely inconsistent . ready invoicing it policies across different regions and they've recently become a little bit better in the western world. an english speaking world involves new policies. but if you look, for example, my organizations research in the mean. ready region, you can see that when it comes to non english speaking spaces in 5 into violence is one of the things that happens quite a lot. but there are a multitude of sins which are unchecked in the spaces. so it's not necessarily the case that this is the only exception. and also what we know is that the more

complicated policy, and the more comp hours they create more temporary measures they create, the harder it's going to be to consistently enforce that in a way that actually fads all this uses. so much of picking up on, on what tim was saying that what's to stop people in other countries who are also victims of war calling for them to be allowed to use hate speech against those they perceive as their aggressors. i mean, that's a really good question. and i mean, i have worked on a particular case that is similar in iran, in july 2021. we saw protests break out in various cities, especially in the previous province of who the st on. and we had hundreds of cases from instagram, the most popularly used platform in iran, of take down a protest footage of people saying death to harmony, who is the supreme leader in iran. and this is very much a ritualized call. it's not a credible threat. of course,

against harmony's life by it's more a chance of dissidents amongst the people. and so facebook was removing these posts . and so after going to them with receipts with evidence and the hundreds of these cases, they came out and they made an exception. they said, for a 2 week period, we will allow iranian users to post deaths to harmony. i mean, as advocates, we weren't totally on board with this change because dest harmony is kind of an evergreen chant, amongst iranians. but it was interesting that this was the reaction and what i do want to know is what were the, you know, like where their advocates bringing evidence that this was a needed policy where they're actually ukrainians getting their content removed because they were making these calls. it's interesting to know, and of course,

like much of the policies are, isn't very much transparency for that. your own case. i know about this because i worked on it myself, but it would be interesting to know and to question why it is that facebook or meta has been so proactive on the ukraine case. but they had not been proactive in other crises. we, we were seeing the crises in may. 2021 in palm stein when the gaza strip was getting bombarded and there was no cracked of reaction. it was weeks of activist digital rights activist palestinian active. it's coming with evidence of hundreds of take downs of hundreds of different ways that users are being stimulated and documenting evidence of human rights abuses. and it was after about a 2 week period that they came out and said, we are going to have a crisis center for israel and palestine for, for the situation. but with ukraine. it was almost in media. and there should be

a lot of questions about how mehta is prioritizing what it considers, crises, and who's you know, human rights, and whose freedom of expression that they seem to value more. maybe i want to explore some more the implications for free speech here, and control over who can say what and when this power that the social media giants yield, i mean, what are the implications for free speech should. social media space is just be a free for all. should you be able to say what you want on restricted on regulated or should it be highly policed with penalties for those who abuse or the social media spaces in and use hate speech on which could be one or the other hasn't? yeah, it has really and these company all really started up very nicely. and in california, in the home and free speech with the idea that people are going to be allowed to

say whatever they want. and over time, what they found is that that leads to all kinds of problems. it needs to bullying. it leads to all kinds of terrible things like young people, seeing images of anorexia, all kinds of things. and so it's become a more regulated space. personally, i am is favor of it being a more regulated space. i think the idea that free speech is always a good thing is a peculiarly american idea. and i think that inevitably it leads to 2 problems. as i say, of bullying of increased hatred. i think in this particular case, it doesn't actually matter that much. we talk about inciting hatred while these people already hate each other. they're already a wall with each other. they're already she to each other. and i think allowing people to express that is actually going to change very much. but generally

speaking, i'm in favor collection. okay, but naming that. but who, who is going to regulate? we're talking about giant american corporations. congress isn't good, isn't going to legislator against them again, it comes down to them being allowed to self regulate and as we're seeing, that just doesn't work. yeah, i mean, i think you say congress isn't willing to regulate, but actually what we're seeing, even in america her and here in britain and in australia, governments are starting to look at regulation, applying the law to the social media companies because they simply have too much power into, in a very, very small number of hands. and so i think what, with what we in seen for a number years now or years is patients running out of government. so, bringing in regulations against tim, i'm a good, i can see you nodding me,

perhaps you want to come in on that but, but let me put something to you here. donald trump remains banned from twitter and facebook for inciting violence out of the capital riots in washington, dc in january 2021. and here we have facebook and instagram, so it's quite, it's fine to incite violence against vladimir putin, russian soldiers. i'm an outer we explain the double standards there. i think the crucial thing here isn't necessarily just the old standard, but again, the lack of scrutiny and lack of regulation that facebook and other social media companies are subject to here. so we know that there are enormous problems in these platforms, misinformation weaponized hatreds, disinformation and extremism calls for insight into violence. these are running around across the spaces and that's just from the rest of the limited picture. the information that we do have. the fact is that matter and other social media platforms, just all subject to the same degree of transparency regulations that they should be . and so we don't get to know the extent of the problems and therefore we don't get

to know why they're making policies in one space and not another. so we don't know what this particular. ready is a response to and really what matters is the, in the regulations are for coming in the u. k. in the year in australia, we need to have the client's full facebook instagram for all of the other companies to be transparent with the data allow research as access to it. so you can see what's actually going on, how they're affecting society. they have massive power and they have basically no responsibility to go with. it must have to keep these double standards. what are we to make of social media companies? something moves to take down russian state content and channels. actors who, who long been allowed to use their platforms to spread propaganda and dis, information without sanction. and now suddenly found, just gone. right? i mean, and again, like husband said, a lot of what's missing is,

what is, what is the transparency behind the decision? what are the actual costs and benefits? because we're seeing a lot of discourse, a lot of policy, a lot of private companies, not just facebook or meta. and, you know, trying to put sanctions, you know, either lawful sanctions or just some self initiated ones on different russian entities. and the question really has to be, what is the benefit in banning these organizations are we, you know, losing insight into what these you know, institutions are thinking about, or are we really putting a stop to rampant misinformation? and i mean, we've seen companies stop providing internet services inside of russia. we've seen, you know, a lot of things that can potentially have a lot of repercussions for ordinary russians who in

a lot of cases might not be supporting the war or, or who tends regime. and so when you bought these, you know, these institutions from having platforms on facebook, what are the repercussions, you know, we saw immediately when sanctions were put on these media companies? you know, we saw like b, b, c, have sanctions. we saw a lot of western media that could be valuable, be blocked for russian people. and so i think it's very important to see what the actual costs are for ordinary civilians when you are doing these kinds of when you're putting these policies in place. and right now, the biggest costs we're seeing is the fact that as of monday and russians are not going to be able to access instagram and other western platforms, have been similarly banned in reaction to these policies. so is it worth it or are these policies actually worth the cost that the russian people are going to have to pay a me?

to what extent is the is the kremlin, which over the last decade has become a master of disinformation, an online subterfuge? to what extent it it is it now finding itself with the tables tug, but it, but it seriously risks losing the information war over it's war in ukraine. i think the criminal is tracking down extremely hard on their own state media, which is where most doreen russians get their information from. so i think in bass and they're winning by essentially disconnecting from the rest the world. and i think facebook has given them an excuse to accelerate by saying to the russian p. o are these people have these people one trans, i hatred against you? you can't trust them way get rid of them. so i think, yeah, you were in a sense, we're playing it into the trembling hands there. and i think is quite cynical what

they've done in that or what facebook has done in that facebook. no, this bath, if they keep taking down people's content in ukraine, those people and people embarrassing people in the rest. poland will start moving to other platforms. and if they move to other platforms, they probably won't come back. so i think in some ways this is quite a cynical news, a profit motivated to mentor, to agree with that it may won't be the case that faced the cynical act. but i think the more cynical act is critically the kremlin. this is probably a policy that wants to pursue any way they've been trying to essentially militate against facebook from the early days of conflict with facebook by fact checking. so that state media organizations. and so this is giving them absolutely an excuse to

do it probably earlier than they would have done. but they were already looking for a reason to shutter facebook and, and similar outlets where you can gain access to information, which doesn't come from programming sources in russia. so they are effectively trying to win the information was on the ground with their own people by shuttering independent media, biber restricting access to social media platforms where you might be exposed to some other ideas from the narratives, allowing to continue operating places like telegram where all tea and, and me and other russian state and media operations have a massive footprint. and when the able to spread the spread this information without much fear of regulation, martha, want to get your thoughts on, on that to with, with this ban on more mainstream social media than twitter, instagram and the introduction also of stiff penalties for anyone declared to be spreading false news is the kremlin basically trying to outlaw information

and willing to succeed. i mean, it's part and parcel of a lot of their efforts for a sovereign internet. i mean, we've been seeing leaks of potential regulations that are going to be nationalizing their internet in reaction to a lot of this and reaction to potential a fears of sanctions, stop it, stopping actual internet international internet connections to russia as well. so, and these, like was mentioned, are, have been policies the russia has, had long standing, has been discussing for a while. and i mean, the role of telegram here is very interesting. it's a very controversial platform, both in terms of you know, what exactly the security guarantees are for its users. but in terms of, you know, it's content moderation policies and, and by that i mean, it's lack of content, moderation policies that allows for

a lot of actors that have been the platform by the mainstream platforms to come and find their voice in their audience there. so i think as we go forward, it's going to be interesting to see how telegrams roll in this conflict is going to shape up. i mean, we've already seen the founder come out and say that he guarantees security and a place 1st ukrainian users. despite the fact that there has been rumors that you know, telegram might have interest to cooperate with the with kremlin. and so, and as of monday, it will be only a social media platform that won't be banned in russia. seeing that most facebook platforms, mehta and twitter will be banned. ok. maybe it's just for ask you as a digital journalism lecturer about how you think that this war has been covered online. it is being played out in real time online. you can follow it. 24 hours

a day, 7 days a week, and things like the open source intelligence gatherers who had heard debunking russian claims. for instance, you can watch all of that going on in real time. what do you make of? it's fascinating to watch. i mean, all you said distressing to see her was what we're looking at here. but the way the information is flowing is absolutely fascinating in the way we're seeing. also, the clock being rolled back so we can actually see the previous digital footprint of some of these people. so thinking here about are the pregnant lady who is photographed in the maternity hospital. and immediately russia is saying, she's a crisis actor. she's an instagram star who runs beauty business. now the interesting

thing was that was actually true. her she had previously been honest grandma's name and but she wasn't a crisis actor. she was an ukranian woman. he blogged about being pregnant and who now within that maternity hospital. and when i, when that bomb hit, so immediately then people will debunking and saying, well, yes she is the this beauty blogger. so i think what we're seeing in is this is happening, the place is already very switched on to me. and so we're seeing things responding very quickly and, and maybe i'm sorry to cut you off. i want to get one last word from, from tim, here on, on that note to him about the switched on population. i just want to get your thoughts on how you cranes president is doing with his use of social media. to what extent is he leaving president brewton looking old and out of touch with the fact that he's valadez left his everywhere on social media right now?

i think we have to bear in mind that this wednesday may be every round social media in the west, but this isn't the fight that is just being one or 4 in the west. it's also one, the crucially for domestic lee in russia, because this invasion can only continue so long as putin remains popular. and so long as you know, the body bags and cost are turned back in such a high level that russia has to think again about what it's doing. so it may be that lensky is very popular here and his social media game is pretty strong. but in addition to that, we're seeing. ready that is continuing to create a strangle hold on information in russia. but i also think that the russian propaganda game, well, the criminal propaganda game here is, is again, also quite strong. so you can see, for example, in response to this latest thing from that. so that russia is all the criminal is pushing the hash tag, russian lives mass, which the cynical repub saying all of the social justice logan from, from the western social justice movements to try to make the claim that russians

and russians because are being victimized both in ukraine and elsewhere, and that was part of the narrative, all of the, the justification that gave for the war in the 1st place. so it may be the case that ukraine is, is putting a pretty strong fight in the propaganda war. but it wouldn't count the crumbling out. yes. ok. i'm afraid we're going to have to leave it fascinating discussion. really appreciate you taking the time to be with us today about on the the bins and tim squirrel. thanks very much indeed. as always, thank you for watching. don't forget you can see the program again at any time. just by going to our website, you'll find that al jazeera dot com. and for further discussion, join us on our facebook page will at facebook dot com forward slash ha inside story . and you can join the conversation on twitter or handle at ha, inside story for me. adrian finnegan on the whole team here in doha. thanks for watching. i'll see you again about ah,

i will totally sell the result of this great and historic rosa then she'll election if i win. a lot of people talk her world was being turned upside down. the way don has been manipulated by populace, like donald trump's lang on racial anxieties. one person that citizens have political as well. and of course, in the united states, as in many other parts of the world that remains an ideal, but not a reality. runs a farmer for you. we'll be able to find out for debit of the table of brotherhood. i have a dream. my dream is that people may my daughter, the young people just have a full voice and don't feel targeted because of their race or ethnicity

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88 on al jazeera. we know what's happening in our region. we know how to get to places that others and off, if ours, instead of going on the way that you tell the story is what can make a difference. ah, this is al jazeera ah 1800 hours at gmc here on al jazeera. welcome to the news our. i'm come all santa maria as we continue our extensive coverage of the war in ukraine. there are fears of an all out russian assaults on keith.