Russia’s financial monitoring agency adds Meta to ‘extremists’ list

Russia’s financial monitoring agency adds Meta to ‘extremists’ list
October 11, 2022, 4:00 pm

A court in Moscow has ruled to label Meta Platforms an “extremist organization," a move that effectively outlaws its Facebook and Instagram social media platforms (File photo: Pixabay)

Russia has added the Tech company Meta to the list of terrorist and extremist organizations. The Federal Financial Monitoring Service Rosfinmonitoring announced that Meta is added to the list on Tuesday (Oct 11), the Sputnik reported.

Russia designated Meta as extremist on March 21 after the social media giant selectively lifted its rules to allow Ukrainians to call for violence and use hate speech against Russian "invaders," including calls for death of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.

In April, Russia imposed sanctions on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

In March 2022, amid its invasion of Ukraine, Russia began to increasingly block international news outlets such as BBC News Russian, Deutsche Welle, and RFE/RL (including Current Time), and Twitter was "restricted".

Facebook is used by less than one in 10 people, according to data from eMarketer.

Russian court labels Meta platforms as 'extremist organization', outlawing Facebook, Instagram

In March, Russian authorities blocked access to Facebook, claiming the world’s largest social media company had broken the country’s rules by limiting online access to state-backed media.

“Since October 2020, 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook have been recorded,” the Russian regulator, Roskomnadzor, said in a statement. “A decision was made to block access to the Facebook network in the Russian Federation.”

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