Rosfinmonitoring, Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service, has added Meta, the owner of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, to its list of terrorists and extremists.
Meta was officially designated as a terrorist organization for the first time in Russia in March 2022, when a Moscow court claimed the world’s most popular social media platform hosted what they ruled as misinformation.
A month later, in April, Mark Zuckerberg was among several technology company executives banned from entering Russia due to allegedly promoting a “Russophobic” agenda.
However, adopting the “terrorist” classification for Meta by the Federal State marks a new development, leaving millions of Russian users of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp unsure about what this means.
Russian internet rights organization Roskomsvoboda consulted its lawyers on the meaning of Meta’s inclusion in Rosfinmonitoring’s list, and they said this development shouldn’t prevent users from continuing to use the social media service.
Instead, Meta’s inclusion on the extremist list blocks all financial transactions with the company and its subsidiaries or brands.
This means that Russia-based users will not be able to legally use monetization options on Instagram or Facebook, run advertisements on the platform, or perform any transactions on shops hosted on either platform.
It is worth noting that Facebook had already stopped offering the ability to create and run advertisement campaigns for Russian users and companies since March 2022 due to “operational difficulties.”
However, Russian lawyer Pavel Chikov is painting a different picture on Telegram today, saying that the prosecutor’s office has now started distributing warnings to users of Facebook and Instagram, who are threatened with administrative and criminal liability for posting on the platforms.
According to the Russian human rights media project OVD-Info, which has been outlawed in its home country since September 29, 2022, this practice is illegal.
In a Telegram post today, OVD-Info reminds users that these notices are neither legally binding nor have any legal basis, so they may as well be ignored.
Illegal as these notices may be, it does not diminish Russian users’ fears, as the authorities have already targeted notable Instagram users in Russia, prosecuting them for posting advertisements on the platform.
Meanwhile, the western world has taken steps against Russian social media platforms, including removing all VKontakte apps from the Apple App Store.
While this was merely a move to comply with sanctions against Russia, Roskomnadzor, the country’s internet watchdog, has demanded explanations from the American tech firm and accused it of applying discriminatory restrictions.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com