Days after its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, Russia’s government has identified yet another enemy: Facebook. Friday, Russia’s Roskomnadzor information agency announced that after the social network had taken unspecified enforcement actions against the Facebook accounts of four Russian media firms, the government would “partially restrict access” to Facebook.
That statement (as translated by Apple and Google) did not describe what sorts of restrictions the government would enforce or what Facebook had done to the accounts of the TV channel Zvezda, the RIA Novosti news agency, and two news sites, Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru.
“Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted on Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations,” Nick Clegg, vice president for global affairs at Facebook’s parent firm Meta Platforms Inc., tweeted Friday afternoon. “We refused.”
Those Russian-controlled outlets still appear to be active on Facebook. But on Thursday, Tech Policy Press CEO Justin Hendrix demanded that Facebook and other US social media firms stop giving Putin’s mouthpieces any platform, writing that they should “suspend these accounts until Russia ceases its attack and withdraws from Ukraine.”
In pre-war times, the Russian Federation seemed content to use Facebook for its influence operations in the US and elsewhere. At home, Russian president Vladimir Putin and his minions did not object to Facebook and other US tech firms silencing people—as long as they got to pick the people, and those companies did its bidding quickly.
That has not always been the case, however: In December, a Russian court fined Meta about $27 million and Google almost $100 million for failing to remove banned content—in many cases, posts from or supporting imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Russia did succeed in forcing Apple and Google to pull a “Smart Voting” app from their app stores that Navalny associates had created to help Russians coordinate their votes behind the one non-regime-approved candidate most likely to win.
The Washington Post reported at the time that “Google received direct threats against staff located in the country from Russian authorities.” In November, Russia’s government moved to formalize that hostage-taking policy, passing a regulation requiring 13 large foreign tech firms to establish a local presence in the country or cease operations.
Putin’s government runs one of the world’s more repressive regimes. Reporters Without Borders ranked it 150 out of 180 worldwide on its latest press-freedom index, while Freedom House gave the country a score of just 19 out of 100 in its latest democracy index.
