Facebook owner Meta bans Russia state media outlets over ‘foreign interference’

AP Business Writer

LONDON (AP) — Meta said it’s banning Russia state media organization from its social media platforms, alleging that the outlets used deceptive tactics to amplify Moscow’s propaganda. The announcement drew a rebuke from the Kremlin on Tuesday.

The company, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, said late Monday that it will roll out the ban over the next few days in an escalation of its efforts to counter Russia’s covert influence operations.

“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 in a prepared statement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lashed out, saying that “such selective actions against Russian media are unacceptable,” and that “Meta with these actions are discrediting themselves.”

“We have an extremely negative attitude towards this. And this, of course, complicates the prospects for normalizing our relations with Meta,” Peskov told reporters during his daily conference call.

RT, formerly known as Russia Today, and Russia Segodnya, also denounced the move.

“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,” RT said in a release.

Rossiya Segodnya, the parent company behind state news agency RIA Novosti and news brands like Sputnik, said Meta’s decision “was not unexpected for us.”

“Meta is a deeply politicized organization. We will continue our work in the countries where we are present and this decision will not affect our work,” Rossiya Segodnya said in a statement.

Meta’s actions comes days after the United States announced new sanctions on RT, accusing the Kremlin news outlet of being a key part of Russia’s war machine and its efforts to undermine its democratic adversaries.

U.S. officials alleged last week that RT was working hand-in-hand with the Russian military and running fundraising campaigns to pay for sniper rifles, body armor and other equipment for soldiers fighting in Ukraine. They also said RT websites masqueraded as legitimate news sites but were used to spread disinformation and propaganda in Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two RT employees of covertly providing millions of dollars in funding to a Tennessee-based content creation company to publish English-language social media videos pushing pro-Kremlin messages.

Moscow has rejected the allegations.

Meta had already taken steps to limit Moscow’s online reach. Since 2020 it has been labeling posts and content from state media. Two years later, it stopped Russian state media from running ads and putting their content lower in people’s feeds, and the company, along with other other social media sites like YouTube and TikTok, stopped European Union users from accessing RT and Sputnik channels after the outlets were sanctioned by Brussels. Also in 2022 Meta took down a sprawling Russia-based disinformation network spreading Kremlin talking points about the invasion of Ukraine.

Meta and Facebook “already blocked RT in Europe two years ago, now they’re censoring information flow to the rest of the world,” RT said in its statement.

Moscow has fought back, designating Meta as an extremist group in March 2022, shortly after sending troops into Ukraine, and blocking Facebook and Instagram. Both platforms — as well as Elon Musk’s X, formerly known as Twitter, which is also blocked — were popular with Russians before the invasion and the subsequent crackdown on independent media and other forms of critical speech. The social media platforms are now only accessible through virtual private networks.

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Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia contributed to this report.