It is now official. The social network Instagram, owned by the American giant Meta, became inaccessible on Monday in Russia, which accuses it of spreading calls for violence against Russians in connection with the conflict in Ukraine.
Refreshing in the application was impossible on Monday morning, while the site was inaccessible without a VPN, AFP journalists found. Instagram is now also on the list of “restricted access” sites published by the telecommunications policeman Roskomnadzor.
Russia announced this access restriction on Friday, explaining that it was leaving this period to allow users to “transfer their photos and videos to other social networks and notify their contacts and subscribers”.
Sites or applications with limited access generally become largely inaccessible. This is already the case for Facebook and Twitter, which were targeted by this same restriction measure after the start of the military operation in Ukraine on February 24.
Earlier on Friday, Russian authorities announced they were taking legal action against the Meta Group, which owns Instagram as well as Facebook and WhatsApp, accusing it of spreading “calls for murder” against Russians.
Extremely popular with Russian youth
Meta announced on Thursday that it would make exceptions to its policy on incitement to violence and hatred by not deleting messages hostile to the Russian army and leaders, amid international outrage over Moscow’s offensive. in Ukraine.
Instagram is extremely popular with Russian youth. Above all, it has also become a crucial online sales tool for many Russian small and medium-sized businesses, as well as artists and artisans, who depend on their visibility on this platform.
Instagram is also one of the social networks most used by Russian opponents like Alexei Navalny, a pet peeve of the Kremlin whose team continues to publish messages despite his imprisonment for more than a year.
Russia is one of the most restrictive countries in terms of freedom of the press and expression, and the situation has deteriorated further in recent weeks with the closure of most of the remaining independent media.