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A Russian court has banned the use of Facebook and Instagram after labeling the activities of the app’s parent company Meta as “extremist,” according to the state-run RIA Novosti news agency.
The move came after Russia’s public prosecutor’s office asked a Moscow court to designate Meta an “extremist organization” for allowing users in several countries to call for violence against President Vladimir Putin and Russian soldiers who participated in the country’s invasion of Ukraine. WhatsApp, which is also owned by Meta, is not part of the ban. Meta declined to comment on the record.
Individuals will not face criminal charges for using Facebook or Instagram. “The use of Meta products by individuals and legal entities should not be considered as participation in extremist activities,” a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office told state media outlet TASS. “Individuals shall not be liable solely for using Meta’s services.”
Also citing the prosecutors, the Net Freedoms Project, a Russian human rights organization, said on its Telegram channel that paying for ads on Instagram and Facebook can now be considered funding of extremist organizations. Any person, business or website with links to Facebook and Instagram, and anyone with a business card displaying the app’s logo could face prosecution, he said. “This is a public demonstration of a symbol of an extremist organization,” the organization said.
The ruling will allow Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s media watchdog, to immediately block Meta’s social network and close its relevant offices in Russia.
Russia blocked access to Facebook earlier this month. A week later, Roskomnadzor announced it would also block Instagram in response to Meta’s announcement that it allowed Facebook and Instagram users in Ukraine to post “forms of political expression” that usually violate the company’s rules against violent speech, such as “death to death. Russian occupiers.”
RIA Novosti wrote that Russian prosecutors believe “extremist information” distributed on Facebook and Instagram “threatens individuals and society as a whole, and the company violated its own rules by allowing the publication of calls to kill the Russian military.”
In February, Meta blocked access to Russian state media RT and Sputnik in the EU. Other American technology companies, including Google and Apple, also responded to the invasion by blocking access to Russian state media.
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