A court in Russia today fined Twitter, Facebook and Telegram operators a total of 35 million rubles (CZK 10.3 million). He punished them for refusing to remove content from their networks that the authorities had identified as objectionable. Facebook is to pay 21 million rubles (6.2 million CZK), Twitter five million and Telegram nine million rubles. The TASS agency informed about it.
In recent months, Moscow has been taking steps to regulate and limit the power of social media and large technology companies. It has repeatedly imposed fines for illegal content, while trying to persuade foreign technology companies to open offices in Russia and store personal data about citizens of the Russian Federation on Russian territory.
Since last October, Russian authorities have begun to slow down the speed of Twitter, explaining that it is not responding enough to calls to remove objectionable content. In Russia, this means, for example, materials that are evaluated as the promotion of narcotics or suicide or as encouraging juveniles to take part in unauthorized demonstrations.