The Prosecutor General’s Office, in agreement with the Russian Foreign Ministry, recognized the Facebook social network as being involved in the violation of the rights of Russian citizens. In this regard, Roskomnadzor decided to partially restrict access to the social network in the country, the press service of the regulator said.
“On February 25, the Prosecutor General’s Office, in agreement with the Foreign Ministry, decided to recognize the social network Facebook as involved in the violation of fundamental human rights and freedoms, as well as the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens. In accordance with the decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office regarding the social network Facebook, starting from February 25, 2022, Roskomnadzor, in accordance with the law, takes measures to partially restrict access,” the statement says.
The reason for this decision was the restriction by Facebook of the accounts of Russian media, including the Zvezda TV channel, the RIA Novosti news agency, and the Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru Internet sites.
In a statement, Roskomnadzor claims that on February 24, the department sent requests to the administration of Meta Platforms (Owner of Facebook) to remove the restrictions imposed by the social network on Russian media and explain the reason for their introduction. “The owners of the social network ignored the requirements of Roskomnadzor,” the department stressed.
The regulator later clarified that social media traffic in Russia would be slowed down as part of measures to protect censored Russian media.
According to the chief analyst of RAEC Karen Ghazaryan, earlier slowdown was carried out in relation to Twitter. It would be more difficult for the Russian authorities to restrict the mobile version, the expert believes, since the service regularly and fairly quickly updates the social network application. But in any case, “slowing down” the work of Facebook will be much more difficult than Twitter, says Kazarian. This is due to the technological features of the social network, he believes. “It is quite possible that the actions of Roskomnadzor will lead to a slowdown in the loading of the company’s websites, but perhaps not the application,” the expert concludes.
Partial blocking may also mean limiting the operation of a single social network service – for example, uploading photos, Vladimir Zykov, general director of the Association of Professional Users of Social Networks and Messengers, told Vedomosti.
One way or another, any restrictions on work in relation to Facebook can lead to a flow of users to other services, he added. “Mostly on VKontakte and Telegram. But in any case, we must not forget that some sites use the Facebook authorization system as authorization on their resources, which means that users will have problems logging into their accounts on these sites, ”summed up Zykov.
A spokesman for VKontakte declined to comment. The Telegram office did not respond to a request.
In March last year, Roskomnadzor announced the start of an initial slowdown in the speed of Twitter in Russia for failing to comply with the requirement to remove materials with information prohibited by Russian law. Later, the Twitter administration, during a meeting with the leadership of Roskomnadzor, expressed its readiness to remove illegal information as a matter of priority. In May, the agency, following an audit, decided not to block Twitter and remove access restrictions on fixed networks, while maintaining a slowdown in the service’s traffic on mobile devices. At the same time, the regulator announced that the social network had removed most of the posts that were found to violate Russian law.