Russia’s financial monitoring watchdog Rosfinmonitoring has declared the US tech giant Meta a terrorist and extremist organization, the Russian media report citing an update on the service’s website on Tuesday.
Rosfinmonitoring’s decision now obliges the Russian banks to freeze all of Meta’s assets and suspend all services to accounts belonging to the tech giant or individuals associated with it.
Back in March, Moscow’s Tverskoy Court issued a decree labeling Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Platforms Inc – which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp- as an extremist organization for allowing hate speech directed toward Russian nationals on its platforms following a request from Russia’s General Prosecutor’s office.
Denying allegations of allowing Russophobia on its platforms, Meta tried to file an appeal of the court’s decision, but it was rejected.
The company insisted that the easing of the hate speech restrictions against Russian nationals was temporary, and it was only limited to certain regions like Poland and Ukraine to allow people to vent their anger over the conflict.
Since the US tech giant was accused of extremist activity and subsequently refused to remove content about the conflict in Ukraine that Moscow considered false, all of Meta’s activities and services, with the exception of WhatsApp, have been banned in Russia and are inaccessible without a VPN.
Yet, there are currently no punishments for Russian citizens who use Facebook and Instagram services or post legal content on them.
Last week, Russian courts have fined Amazon’s streaming services Twitch and TikTok in the latest step in Russia’s long-running dispute with Big Tech.
Twitch was issued a $68,000 fine for violating Russian laws on the spreading of fake information by failing to remove an interview with a Ukrainian political figure that Russian authorities claimed contained fake information.
Twitch also faces two new fines for not deleting information about the course of Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine that Russian authorities consider unreliable.
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