Russia blocked Facebook on Friday, lumping itself with the likes of China, Iran, and North Korea by cutting off all domestic access to the social network.
The government’s Roskomnadzor communications regulator announced this in a statement that (as translated by Google) cited “26 cases of discrimination against Russian media and information resources by Facebook,” which it said violate a law requiring “unhindered access” to Russian media. The announcement did not mention Instagram or WhatsApp.
Last week, Roskomnadzor said it was partially restricting access to Facebook after the network continued applying fact-checking labels to such officially sanctioned news outlets as the RIA Novosti news agency and the Zvezda TV channel. Days later, Facebook took steps to limit the circulation of posts from Russian state-controlled media.
“Soon millions of ordinary Russians will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out,” Nick Clegg, VP for global affairs at Facebook parent Meta, said in a tweet on Friday. “We will continue to do everything we can to restore our services so they remain available to people to safely and securely express themselves and organize for action.”
Russia’s Facebook ban only deepens the country’s isolation since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. Western governments and companies have responded with economic sanctions and blockades.
In the last few days, Electronic Arts, Microsoft, AMD, Intel. and many others have said they will cease all sales in Russia. OneWeb announced Thursday that it would no longer launch its internet satellites on Russian rockets from the Baikonur, Kazakhstan, facilities operated by Russia’s Roscosmos space agency–although that only came after Roscosmos demanded that Britain’s government relinquish its ownership of the firm and that OneWeb renounce any military uses of its low-Earth-orbit satellite constellation.
But ICANN, the California nonprofit that oversees the internet’s domain name system, declined a request from Ukraine’s government that it revoke domains used by Russia’s government and order a shutdown of DNS root servers inside the country.
While relatively few countries have blocked Facebook outright, far more have enacted temporary bans on the social network, usually in response to Facebook not removing content a government doesn’t like.
It’s less often that governments come at Facebook with a version of Russia’s complaint that Facebook has been overly aggressive in moderating content, but that happens too. For example, Republican-led governments in Texas and Florida have passed laws–since blocked by court rulings–that ban social networks from moderating content based on its political substance.
