Facebook’s parent company, Meta, said Friday that Russia had placed restrictions on it and other company social networks after the platform refused to stop verifying information.
On Friday, Russia’s communications regulator announced it was “limiting access” to Facebook, which it accuses of censoring and imposing restrictions on four Russian media outlets, coinciding with the Russian military’s invasion of Ukraine.
Nick Clegg, vice president of Meta, said that the platform “verifies” the information published by these media.
Facebook assures that an external verifier – authorized by the platform but independent – found doubtful information in the news or the video.
“Yesterday, we were ordered by Russian authorities to stop checking and flagging content published by four Russian state-controlled media outlets,” Clegg wrote. “We refused. As a consequence, they announced that they would restrict access to our services.”
The invasion of Ukraine gave rise to an explosion of fake news on the internet, especially on social networks, a phenomenon that has become recurrent every time there is a war.
“Russians are using our apps to express themselves and organize actions,” the former British deputy prime minister and now vice president of the tech giant wrote on his Twitter account.
“We want to continue making their voices heard,” he added, “that they share what is happening and organize themselves through Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger,” the group’s platforms.
