Andy Stone, a spokesman for Meta, was convicted to six years in prison by a Russian court in absentia on “terrorism” accusations related to Meta’s wartime content filtering policy.
Russian independent media outlet, Meduza, disclosed this in a report on Monday.
According to Meduza, state prosecutors requested that Stone receive the maximum punishment for the offence of “justifying terrorism,” which is seven years in a maximum security facility.
Following his declaration in March 2022 that the parent company of Facebook and Instagram would temporarily relax its ban on violent speech for remarks against the “Russian invaders” of Ukraine, Stone was charged with the “promotion,” “public calls for,” and “justification” of terrorism.
Interfax cited the defendant’s lawyer, Valentina Filippenkova, as saying that the sentence would be appealed.
“I asked for an acquittal,” she was quoted as saying.
In addition to Stone receiving a six-year prison sentence, the court decided that Stone should be “banned from administering websites for four years,” according to Meduza. Stone resides in Washington, D.C., so it’s unclear how Russia intends to carry out the decision.
Stone and Meta have not responded to Russia’s criminal accusations.
Following its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Russia outlawed Meta as an “extremist” organisation and restricted Facebook and Instagram.
Meta Since April 2022, CEO Mark Zuckerberg has been prohibited from entering Russia.
Following the prohibition of criticism of the Kremlin-designated “special military operation” in Ukraine, Russia has taken a harder stance against independent and social media outlets.
We earlier reported that the central data authority for the European Union declared that Meta, the owner of Facebook, cannot charge customers for data privacy when they provide ad-free subscriptions.
