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Russia restricts access to Instagram

March 11, 2022
1:33 PM

LAST UPDATE: 18:40

Russia today announced that it was restricting access to the social networking site Instagram, which it accused of propagating violence against Russian soldiers in connection with their involvement in Ukraine.

“At the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, access to the social networking site Instagram… will be restricted to Russia,” the telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor said in a statement.

Earlier, the Russian prosecutor’s office asked the Russian judiciary to characterize Meta Platforms, Facebook’s parent company, as an “extremist organization”, the Interfax news agency reported today.

Moscow threatens to suspend the company

Russia will suspend the activities of Meta Platforms if the information transmitted by Reuters proves to be true, according to which the platform will allow its users in some countries to call for violence against Russians and Russian soldiers, the Kremlin warned today.

According to internal messages that came to the knowledge of the Reuters news agency yesterday Thursday, Meta Platforms decided to allow users of the Facebook and Instagram sites in several countries to make posts calling for violence against the Russians, especially the Russian military, temporarily removing the prohibition of hate speech provided for in the rules of their use.

“We do not want to believe the Reuters report, it’s just hard to believe,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peshkov.

“We hope it is not true, because if it is, then it means that the most decisive measures must be taken to suspend the activities of this company,” he added.

Meta’s spokesman Andy Stone confirmed the change to AFP. “Because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we show leniency in forms of political expression that normally violate our rules of incitement to violence, such as ‘death to the Russian invaders,'” he said, adding that “we continue to disapprove violence against Russian citizens. ”

This policy change concerns Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine.

SOURCE: ΑΠΕ-ΜΠΕ

Source: Capital

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