Facebook says Putin's move to shut it down in Russia proves it's 'bad for dictators.' It's not that simple.

• Meta has taken a hard stance against Russia since the invasion of Ukraine began.
• COO Sheryl Sandberg said social media is "bad for dictators."

Meta has been trying to prove itself during Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Meta moved quickly to outline the steps it would be taking in response to the crisis. The company's president of global policy, Nick Clegg, announced it was setting up a team to tackle misinformation and hate speech as well as fact-check and tag any false Russian state-media the same day Russian troops rolled into Ukraine.

Russia has hit back at Meta, blocking all access to Facebook in Russia last week and moving this week to designate Meta as an "extremist organization."

Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg said during an interview at a Cartier-sponsored event this week Russia took Facebook down because it poses a threat.

"Social media is bad for dictators, that's why Putin took us down," Sandberg said.

It's a bold claim that positions Facebook and its parent company Meta as a direct opponent to authoritarian rulers and governments. Given Facebook's sensitive history of being a tool used by Russian disinformation campaigns, locking horns with the Kremlin also provides a handy redemption arc for the company.

But squaring up to Putin doesn't necessarily mean Facebook is a foil for dictators everywhere.

"Whether or not Facebook is good for dictators is debatable and rather an overstatement of the alleged importance or threat of Facebook," Professor Dina Matar, an expert in politics, communications, and media at the SOAS University of London, told Insider.

"There is no doubt that historically speaking, authoritarian leaders (states) have consistently moved to shut down Facebook along with other social media platforms during moments of crisis or when their power was challenged," she said.

"On the other hand, Facebook itself has inadvertently collaborated with authoritarianism by blocking some users, including those fighting for human rights," Matar countered.

Professor Charlie Beckett, a specialist in media and journalism at the London School of Economics, told Insider broadly speaking social media is bad for dictators — but agreed it can be weaponized by anti-democratic forces.

Both Beckett and Matar pointed to Myanmar, where Facebook admitted in 2018 its platform was used by the state to perpetrate violence against the Rohingya Muslim population.

Meta says it has improved its systems significantly since then, and the company's former head of counterterrorism policy, Brian Fishman, told Protocol in an interview this week: "Facebook is way better at dealing with crises today than they were when I first got there."

But Myanmar isn't the only example, Matar also pointed to an Amnesty International report from 2020, which said tech companies including Facebook and Google were playing an "increasingly complicit role" in censorship crackdowns by the Vietnamese government.

Professor Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, a psychologist at University College London, said social media has pros and cons if you're a dictator.

He said social media provides dictators with an "easy way to promote their own personality cult," as well as providing a tool for surveilling citizens.

Beckett also said taking a hard line against Russia is a relatively easy stand for Facebook to take. "This is a fairly clear cut political issue in terms of which side you're gonna stand on," he said.

He also said that Meta's approach to Putin doesn't necessarily tell us whether it will take an equally strong stand against other regimes.

"What about a populist government in Poland that's bringing in laws against gay rights and so on? You can talk about a dictator that invades another country but what about other authoritarian regimes — what's the cut-off point where you start taking action," he said.

"Is it only dictators that invade other democracies?" he added.