Moscow has also increased pressure on domestic media,
threatening to block reports that contain what it describes as "false
information" regarding its military operation in Ukraine, where Russian
missiles were pounding Kyiv and families cowered in shelters.
The state communications regulator said Facebook had ignored
its demands to lift restrictions on four Russian media outlets on its platform
— RIA news agency, the Defence Ministry's Zvezda TV, and websites gazeta.ru and
lenta.ru.
Meta's head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said in a
statement on Twitter, "yesterday, Russian authorities ordered us to stop
the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted to Facebook by
four Russian state-owned media organizations. We refused.
As a result, they have announced they will be restricting
the use of our services." Meta, which has long been under pressure to
combat misinformation, partners with outside fact-checkers, including Reuters,
which assess some content for veracity. Meta says that content rated false,
altered or partly false is shown to fewer users.
Clegg said "ordinary Russians" were using Meta's
apps —which include Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, as well as Facebook —to
"express themselves and organize for action" and that the company wanted
them to continue to do so.
Russia has been trying to exert tighter control over the
internet and big tech for years, something critics say threatens individual and
corporate freedom, and is part of a wider crackdown against outspoken opponents
of the Kremlin.
The US Senator Mark Warner said in a letter to the chief
executives of Facebook, YouTube, and others that the companies have a duty to
ensure their social media platforms are not misused by Russia and Russia-linked
entities.
Each company has "a clear responsibility to ensure that
your products are not used to facilitate human rights abuses, undermine
humanitarian and emergency service responses, or advance harmful
disinformation," Warner said.
Alphabet's Google said it has removed hundreds of YouTube
channels and thousands of videos over the last few days for violating its
policies and was continuing to look for and disrupt disinformation campaigns
and hacking. Google is also evaluating what any new sanctions and export
controls could mean for the company, said spokeswoman Ivy Choi.
Twitter said users in Russia and Ukraine would no longer see
ads —an attempt to avoid distracting from public safety messages — and that
they would not get recommended tweets from accounts they do not follow in a bid
to limit the spread of abusive content.
It was not immediately clear what Russia's restrictions on
Facebook would involve. Last year Moscow slowed down the speed of Twitter in a
punitive move.
"In accordance with the decision of the General
Prosecutor's Office, starting from Feb. 25, partial access restrictions are
being imposed by Roskomnadzor on the Facebook social network," the
regulator, Roskomnadzor, said in a statement.
Meta has already irked Russia's authorities. Moscow
routinely fines the company small sums for what it says is a failure to delete
illegal content quickly enough.
In December, it issued a much bigger fine of 2 billion
roubles for what it described as a repeated failure to delete content. It has
also fined Google, Twitter, and TikTok. @ Reuters
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