Russia will ban Twitter from the country in 30 days if the platform does not remove illegal content, including child pornography, information on committing suicide, and drug-related content.
Vadim Subbotin, deputy head of Roskomnadzor, Russia’s equivalent of the FCC, said Twitter was not reacting to the regulator’s requests to remove illegal content “as they should,” and that the social network would be blocked in the country in a month if its failure to comply continues.
‘Twitter is not reacting to our requests as they should. If the situation carries on then it will be blocked in a month without a court order,’ Subbotin said.
It comes a week after Subbotin announced that Twitter’s internet speed would be slowed down unless it removed the offending content.
Meanwhile Twitter is also being sued in Russia for allegedly failing to delete material encouraging children to join anti-Putin protests.
Twitter said at the time that it was worried about the impact on free speech despite Russian laws specifically outlawing children attending protests.
Both the Russian government and jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, widely considered to be the most prominent anti-Putin dissident in the country, have expressed concern about Silicon Valley’s interference in politics.
The Russian government said the decision of social media companies to ban President Trump in January was a “nuclear blast in cyberspace,” and a “blow against the democratic values proclaimed by the west,” while Navalny called it an “unacceptable act of censorship.”
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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