Roskomnadzor will “partially restrict” access to Facebook due to the blocking of a number of Russian media outlets. How exactly – the department did not specify, experts believe that the speed of access to the social network will be slowed down, as happened with Twitter earlier.
Roskomnadzor announced that access to the social network Facebook (owned by Meta Platforms, Inc.) will be partially restricted, as stated on the agency’s website.
The message states that as of February 25, 2022, Roskomnadzor, in compliance with the law, is taking measures to partially restrict access to Facebook, in line with the decision of the Prosecutor General’s Office regarding the social network.
The department indicated that the partial restriction is a result of the social network's official accounts of Russian media being restricted, which goes against Russian law. Roskomnadzor requested the removal of restrictions on Russian media such as RIA Novosti, the Zvezda TV channel, Lenta.ru, and Gazeta.ru, but the company ignored these demands.
Consequently, the Prosecutor General’s Office, in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry, has deemed the social network as being involved in violating the fundamental rights and freedoms of Russian individuals.
RBC has sent a request to Facebook and Roskomnadzor.
For nearly a year now, Roskomnadzor has been using special equipment to partially restrict access to Twitter. Since March 2021, the agency has been slowing down the speed of access to this social network as required by the “sovereign Runet” law, due to the platform's failure to remove content banned in Russia.
Facebook was sanctioned under the law against foreign social networks and IT resources for discriminating against Russians. The law, effective since late 2020, allows the Prosecutor General, in agreement with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to designate the status of “involved in violations of fundamental rights and freedoms.” One reason for applying this law is to limit the spread of “publicly significant information.” Upon notification from the Prosecutor General, Roskomnadzor has the authority to partially or completely block the information resource.
The lawmakers behind the law, including United Russia deputies Alexander Khinshtein and Anton Gorelkin, Communist Party deputy Alexander Yushchenko, and Senator Alexei Pushkov, introduced the initiative in response to complaints from RIA Novosti, RT, and Krym-24 TV channels about restrictions from Western IT platforms.
Khinshtein, when commenting on the new norm during the bill's development, likened it to “nuclear weapons” and referred to it as a “deterrence mechanism.” However, he acknowledged even then that this law could be used to completely block platforms like YouTube in Russia.
The impact of the slowdown on Facebook
Facebook's monthly audience in January 2022 among Russians over 12 years old on desktops and mobile devices (including both the application and the web version) was 51.8 million, according to Mediascope’s Cross Web project. On average, each user spent 15 minutes a day on the app.
LiveInternet founder German Klimenko says that Roskomnadzor “instead of punishing Facebook for blocking Russian media, is punishing Russian users.”
“If you make a decision, then it must have a reaction: for example, Facebook will unblock four media outlets. If Roskomnadzor limited advertising payments to the company, it would be noticeable for it, and users would not experience any inconvenience,” he comments. At the same time, Klymenko drew attention to the fact that now the complication of the work of Facebook will be of little interest to people, everyone is following the news in Ukraine. “We don’t know yet what format the restrictions will take. Roskomnadzor leaves a kind of backlash with such a warning so that the partners hear and have time to either change their mind or somehow realize the depth of their guilt, ”said the creator of LiveInternet.
In general, he believes that the slowdown of the social network will be similar to the situation with Twitter. “Most likely, access to the site will be difficult in the form of limiting the download of photos and videos,” Klymenko suggests. “If this is a variant of Twitter, then none of the users will leave the social network. Moreover, users can use VPN. For us, the share of Facebook’s revenue from Russian users is quite large, but the main thing is content, the ability to have all the information,” he says.
The technical director of Roskomsvoboda, Stanislav Shakirov, noted that the actions of Roskomnadzor are similar to the reaction to the blocking by the social network of those Russian media that describe the military operation in Ukraine from an angle favorable to the Russian authorities. He also suggested that the same measures that were applied to Twitter would be applied to Facebook. “When a user opens the social network, they will see a slowdown in its loading and a slowdown in the loading of videos. For the social network itself, this will not be critical, since the number of Russian users is not so large. Another thing is that Facebook users probably already have plugins or VPNs that will allow them to bypass the blocking,” Shakirov argues. He believes that there will be no outflow of users from this site, since “there is nowhere to flow to”: “There are users on Facebook who either do not want or cannot use Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, so they have to go somewhere especially there is no point”.
