Sources: USA Today
Meta Platforms bans Russian state media from Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp, including RT and Rossiya Segodnya, citing alleged deceptive tactics used by the networks to carry out "influence operations" while evading detection. 2024-09-17
Meta Platforms experiences a large-scale outage of most of its services, including Facebook and Instagram. Isolated outages are also reported by users of Google, X, and Microsoft Teams. 2024-03-5
Russia adds Meta Platforms, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, to its list of "terrorists and extremists" for tolerating Russophobia and allowing calls to violence against Russians. 2022-10-11
Facebook and Instagram starts to allow users in Eastern Europe, the Baltics, and the Caucasus to promote violence against Russians and Russian soldiers in the context of the war in Ukraine, which is normally restricted, according to internal emails. A Meta spokesperson states that "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.'" However, calls for violence against Russian prisoners of war and "credible calls for violence against Russian civilians" will remain prohibited. Death threats against Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko will also be permitted. Meta's spokesperson adds that they are, "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," which was previously forbidden. 2022-03-10
Facebook, Inc., the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, renames itself to Meta Platforms. CEO Mark Zuckerberg says that the rename was done in order to reflect the company's diversification into other areas, such as virtual reality. 2021-10-28
New Zealand news media company Stuff announces it will temporarily stop posting articles to Facebook and Instagram, saying they have not done enough to address fake news, hate speech, and false advertising. 2020-07-6
Facebook and Instagram amend their advertising policies so that politicians are allowed to use influencers to promote their campaigns, in response to U.S. presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg using them to advertise his candidacy without being subjected to both sites' regulations on political ads. 2020-02-14
Facebook and Instagram ban political figures Alex Jones, Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Milo Yiannopoulos, Paul Joseph Watson, Paul Nehlen, David Duke and Laura Loomer, from their platforms and remove their pages for allegedly engaging in "violence and hate". 2019-05-2
Austrian privacy organization NOYB files complaints to regulators in four EU countries alleging that Facebook, Google, Instagram, and WhatsApp are violating the GDPR. 2018-05-25
Social networking service Facebook, and its photo-sharing subsidiary Instagram, ban private, person-to-person sales of guns via their services. 2016-01-30