Russia has banned Instagram after banning Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. a few days ago. Russian communications agency, Roskomnadzor, announced the news citing Meta’s decision to direct moderators to allow users to post messages calling for violence against Russian soldiers, as reported by The Verge.
The block came into effect on 4th March. Meta-owned platform Whatsapp is excluded from these prohibitions. This latest ban has made a popular social media platform unreachable to a major chunk of the country’s population.
The head of Instagram, Adam Mosseri is unhappy with the decision, which is evident from his Tweet – “This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as -80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country.”
Meta announced last week that it was temporarily letting its users in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, and Ukraine post messages against the Russian soldiers. This has evidently irked the Russian government.
Meta’s president of global affairs, Nick Clegg, came with a clarification stating that the decision did not aim at encouraging any attack on Russian citizens. They allowed the posts in the context of speech regarding only the “Russian military invasion of Ukraine”. He has also clarified that no posts that call for the death of the Russian President Vladimir Putin would be entertained or allowed.
Following the announcement, Russian influencers on Instagram posted farewell posts to their followers. They asked them to follow them on other social media platforms, or download VPN software to sidestep the ban.
Meanwhile, a Russian Instagram influencer’s post venting out her grief about the ban as it was the only source of her income has attracted criticism and retribution. People have posted satirical comments stating that her biggest worry was her income rather than the suffering Ukrainians.
As per sources, Russia has opened a criminal case against Meta branding it as an extremist organization.
As the ban of popular social media platforms by Russia attracts heated debates, one thing is for sure: it hurts both the platforms and the people of Russia.
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