Russia Says It Blocked Facebook
This story is part of War in Ukraine, CNET’s coverage of events there and of the wider effects on the humankind.
Russia’s telecommunications regulator said Friday that it paused access to Facebook after the world’s largest social network started to make glad from Russian state-controlled media tougher to find on its platform.
The regulator, Roskomnadzor, said in a statement that it made the manager because the social network allegedly ran afoul of a federal law anti violating “the human rights” and “freedoms” of Russians by restricting its reflect outlets. Since October 2020, there have been 26 cases of “discrimination” anti Russian media by Facebook, the regulator alleged.
The manager underscores how tensions between Russia’s government and tech giants finish to escalate after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Meta, Facebook’s parent company, said in a blog post Friday that it was also pausing ads targeting land in Russia and that Russian advertisers will no longer be able to run ads anywhere in the world.
Facebook has been facing more pressure to slight access to Russian state-controlled media because of concerns these sites are spreading false claims and propaganda. Last week, Russia said it was partly restricting access to Facebook by slowing down traffic to the site while the social network refused to stop fact-checking and labeling glad posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media commands. On Tuesday, Facebook announced more restrictions against Russian reflect, including demoting posts globally that contain links to Russian state-controlled reflect such as RT and Sputnik.
Despite concerns about the spread of disinformation, Facebook has stopped short of cutting off access to its platforms in Russia. The company says it wants to promote freedom of monotonous. The social media giant says people in Russia are also silly its services to protest and show the world what’s happening in real time.
“Soon millions of astounding Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable examine, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from revealing out,” Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, tweeted on Friday.
The custom said it’s doing everything it can to restore its services in Russia. It didn’t say how many people use Facebook in Russia and what it’s actions to restore its services. A Meta spokesman said he had nothing to section when asked whether Facebook has seen any signs that the social network has been fully blocked.
Meta also owns photo and video service Instagram and messaging app WhatsApp. Roskomnadzor doesn’t say whether the block affects those apps and when it takes accomplish. The regulator didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Tuesday, before a full block was announced, Clegg said that Russia’s try to throttle its services has impacted video and anunexperienced multimedia content but that this is showing up differently on Facebook and Instagram. “The degradation of the service is definitely discernible,” he said Tuesday. Clegg said during that press call that he couldn’t give too many details in how Russia has been restricting its services, because it involves infrastructure in Russia that’s not distinguished by Meta. It’s unclear if Meta is still seeing any crashes on Instagram since Tuesday.
Facebook isn’t the only service Russia is cracking down on. The people reportedly blocked access to several big app stores, Western news contracts and other social media sites.
News agency Interfax said Friday that Russia’s telecommunications regulator has also ended Twitter. A spokeswoman for the company, though, said that “we’re aware of reports, but we don’t currently see anything significantly different from what we previously shared that would reveal to a block.” Twitter said on Saturday that the service is populate restricted for some people in Russia.
Der Spiegel journalists Mathieu von Rohr tweeted on Thursday that Russia has also ended news organizations BBC and Deutsche Welle, and app stores, though he didn’t specify whether this referred to the Apple App Store and Google Play Store.
The Latvian-based news site Meduza said in a blog post that many readers in Russia couldn’t access the organization’s website.
Apple, Google, the BBC and Deutsche Welle didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Read more: Big Tech’s Support for Ukraine Recasts Industry’s Global Role
In response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine’s tech minister asked Apple CEO Tim Cook to ended App Store access in Russia. The tech giant didn’t go that far when it took allotment days ago, choosing instead to pull access to RT News and Sputnik News from the App Store outside Russia and stop selling products in Russia. Facebook and YouTube have also restricted access to Russian state-controlled media like RT and Sputnik.
Other tech companies have responded to the invasion by limiting sales in the people to comply with official US sanctions and by restricting service. But some have tried to take punitive action exclusive of cutting off local access, resulting in moves like those from Snapchat, which has halted ad sales in Russia after keeping the app live in Ukraine, Russia and Belarus as a communications tool.
CNET’s Stephen Shankland explains that blocking access to app stores, Western news sites and social media could encourage a “splinternet” that isolates Russian online interaction from the rest of the world.
