After parent company Meta indicated it would accept calls for violence against Russian forces in the context of the Ukrainian invasion, Roskomnadzor, the Russian communications agency, said Friday that it planned to block access to Instagram.
Earlier in the day, Russia’s prosecutor general requested for Meta to be classified as an “extremist” group and filed a criminal complaint, but Roskomnadzor went ahead and banned the platform.
According to a Telegram thread, the block will go into force on March 14th AM.
“Meta Platforms Inc. made an unprecedented decision by allowing the posting of information containing calls for violence against Russian citizens on its social networks Facebook and Instagram,” a Roskomnadzor Telegram announcement read, in Russian. Meta had tweaked its hate speech policy Thursday to allow some calls to violence against Russians on Facebook and Instagram, specifically in the context of the Ukraine invasion, according to emails reviewed by Reuters.
“We have temporarily made allowances for forms of political expression that would normally violate our rules like violent speech such as ‘death to Russian invaders,’” a Meta spokesperson told Reuters. “We still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”
“I want to be crystal clear: our policies are focused on protecting people’s rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country,” Nick Clegg said in a statement Friday.
Facebook and Instagram have taken a harder stance against Russian propaganda than Twitter and TikTok, which the Russian government has viewed with caution. Instead of simply censoring Twitter, Russia has decided to impose uneven restrictions on the network. On Thursday, Twitter launched a Tor address to enable Russians get around what looks to be a soft block. TikTok is still operational, however Russian users are unable to see anything created outside of Russia.
The handling of Instagram in Russia is exceptional in that the country has given early notification. It’s likely that Russia would ban the network before of time, but users have till Friday to preserve their photographs and conversations.