Meta, the social networking behemoth, has announced that it is banning Russian media site RT, only days after the Biden administration accused it of serving as an instrument of Moscow’s spy agencies.
The company, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, said it is blocking Russia’s state media organisations from its social media platforms, claiming that the outlets employed misleading strategies to spread Moscow’s misinformation.
The Kremlin issued a condemnation of the news on Tuesday.
“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” Meta said.
RT, which had 7.2 million Facebook followers before the ban was announced, said in a statement that it would continue to spread its message despite Meta’s actions.
On Friday, the Biden administration announced further penalties, and a State Department official described the media outlet as “a fully-fledged member of the intelligence apparatus and operation of the Russian government” for the war in Ukraine.
United States officials then accused RT of conducting clandestine information warfare operations around the world on behalf of Russia’s espionage agencies.
According to James Rubin, coordinator of the State Department’s Global Engagement Centre, RT is “where propaganda, disinformation, and lies are spread to millions, if not billions, of people around the world.”
“It’s cute how there’s a competition in the West – who can try to spank RT the hardest, in order to make themselves look better. Meta/Facebook already blocked RT in Europe two years ago. Now they’re censoring information flow to the rest of the world,” an RT spokesperson said.
“Don’t worry, where they close a door, and then a window, our ‘partisans’ – or in your parlance, guerrilla fighters – will find the cracks to crawl through – as by [the] Biden administration’s.
The bans are scheduled to go into force within the following several days.
We earlier reported that Brazil’s top prosecutor is standing firm on the recent ban of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), urging the country’s Supreme Court to end legal challenges against the decision. According to the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), the platform’s suspension does not infringe on free speech, dismissing claims that the ban was unconstitutional.
