Russians began to receive letters from the Gosuslugi portal warning Roskomnadzor to block Instagram. The agency explains the adoption of such a measure by the need to protect Russians from bullying online and encourages people to go to Odnoklassniki and VKontakte.
“We need to ensure the psychological health of citizens, especially children and adolescents, to protect them from harassment and insults online,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement.
The agency also notes that the leadership of the social network “contrary to international law for the first time in history and only in relation to Russians allowed calls for violence.” Such actions Instagram Roskomnadzor calls “part of the crime, characterized as” genocide “.
The decision to block Instagram in Russia is wrong, because it will cut off 80 million users in the country from each other and the rest of the world, said the head of the social network, Adam Mozzeri.
Roskomnadzor will block the service at midnight on March 14. The agency announced that it had decided to give Instagram users additional time to transfer data to other social networks and notify their contacts and subscribers.
The Prosecutor General’s Office demanded to restrict access to Instagram after Andy Stone, the press secretary of the owner of the Meta Platforms social network, announced that the company had temporarily lifted the ban on calls for violence against the Russian military on Facebook and Instagram. The ban will be lifted for users in several countries, including Russia and Ukraine. In connection with the Meta decision, the Russian Embassy in Washington demanded that the company be held accountable.
Russian governors and government agencies have begun massively shutting down their official Instagram accounts amid demands from the Prosecutor General’s Office to recognize the owner of the social network, Meta, as an extremist organization.