Banned worldwide

Meta bans Russian propaganda channel RT

The Facebook parent company justified the ban with "foreign interference activities".

(Bild: AFP/Kirill Kudryavtsev)

Meta has banned Russian state media worldwide from its applications such as Facebook and Instagram. "After careful consideration, we have expanded our ongoing measures against Russian state media," the US company announced on Monday.

"Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related organizations are now banned from our apps worldwide due to foreign interference activities," Meta told the AFP news agency, after the US recently accused RT and employees of the state broadcaster of being an "arm of the Russian intelligence apparatus" and covertly funding disinformation campaigns on online services such as TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.

Russia has been the largest source of covert disinformation campaigns on Meta's online platforms for years. These efforts at deceptive online influence have increased following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, according to reports that Meta routinely publishes.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, RT was officially banned in the UK, Canada, the EU and the US. As a result, according to US prosecutors, "an entire empire of covert projects" was created to influence public opinion in Western countries.

Criticism from Moscow
The government in Moscow criticized the blocks. Meta is discrediting itself as a result, says presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov. He added that this clouded the prospects for a normalization of relations between Russia and the US company.

For its part, Russia tightened its crackdown on the media after the start of the Ukraine invasion in 2022, classifying Meta as an "extremist" organization and blocking Instagram and Facebook. This was due to changes in Meta's hate speech policy, which were intended to allow users to express their criticism of the Russian war against Ukraine.