Russia has announced plans to block access to Instagram and launched a criminal case against its owner, Meta Platforms Inc, after the company said it would allow posts calling for “death to Russian occupiers.”
Friday’s move is the latest in Russia’s confrontation with US-based social media platforms that has escalated since its invasion of Ukraine.
Moscow has already restricted access to Twitter and blocked Facebook, which is also owned by Meta.
Russia’s communications and media regulator Roskomnadzor said it was restricting access to the hugely popular Instagram because the platform spreads “calls to commit violent acts against Russian citizens, including military personnel.”
The ban will take effect on Monday, the post said, giving active Instagram users “time to share their photos and videos to other social networks and notify their followers.”
In response, Meta’s president of international affairs, Nick Clegg, defended what he called the temporary decision “taken in extraordinary and unprecedented circumstances.”
“I want to be very clear: Our policy is to protect people’s right to free speech as an expression of self-defense in response to a military invasion of their country,” the statement said.
“The fact is that if we were to apply our standard content policy without any adjustments, we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and rage against the invading military, which would rightly be seen as unacceptable.” .
On Monday, Instagram will be blocked in Russia. This decision cuts off 80 million people in Russia from each other and from the rest of the world, since about 80% of people in Russia follow Instagram accounts outside their own country. This is not true.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) March 11, 2022
He noted that the policy only applies in Ukraine and the company has not changed its policy on inciting hatred against Russians.
“Illegal Calls”
But Russia’s Investigative Committee, which investigates serious crimes, has already said it is launching an investigation into Meta, and prosecutors have insisted that the Silicon Valley giant be branded an “extremist.”
“A criminal case has been opened … in connection with illegal calls for murder and violence against citizens of the Russian Federation by employees of the American company Meta, which owns the social networks Facebook and Instagram,” the committee, which reports directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin, said.
It was not immediately clear what the consequences of initiating a criminal case might be.
According to an Insider Intelligence researcher, Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp services are popular in Russia, with 7.5 million, 50.8 million and 67 million users respectively last year.
The Russian news agency RIA, citing a source, said that the legal steps would not affect WhatsApp, as the messaging app is considered a means of communication, not a way to publish information.
The relaxation of Meta’s rules caused controversy almost immediately, with the United Nations expressing concern, warning that it could lead to “hate speech” against the Russians.
UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Elisabeth Throssell said the policy lacked clarity, which “could certainly fuel hatred against Russians in general.”
Contrasting views
Meta, which boasts billions of users worldwide on its apps, has previously struggled with allowing people to post in times of upheaval.
In July 2021, the firm temporarily allowed publications calling for “death of Khamenei,” referring to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during protests that rocked the country.
Tech platforms have had to deal with many sensitive issues related to the war in Ukraine, such as when US Senator Lindsey Graham called for the assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin in TV interviews and on Twitter.
“The only way this can end is for someone in Russia to take this guy down,” Graham said in a March 3 tweet, which Twitter did not remove.
Meta’s decision sparked sharply opposing opinions.
“Politics is about calling for violence against Russian soldiers,” said Emerson Brooking, a disinformation expert at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.
“The call for violence here, by the way, is also a call for resistance, because Ukrainians are resisting a violent invasion,” he added.
But some have expressed deep concern, such as Lehigh University professor Jeremy Littau, who tweeted: “We don’t allow hate speech except against certain people from a certain country” – that’s a hell of a lot of worms.
Facebook and other US tech giants have taken steps to punish Russia for the attack on Ukraine, and Moscow has also taken steps to block access to the leading social network, as well as Twitter.
Thus, Russia has joined a very small club of countries other than the largest social network in the world, along with China and North Korea.
Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last month, Russian authorities have also stepped up pressure on independent media, even as press freedom in the country was already rapidly eroding.
Moscow blocked Facebook and restricted Twitter on the same day last week that it supported jail terms for media publishing “false information” about the military.