Zuck's War: Russia Blocks Instagram Across Country

Russia has reportedly shut off access to the Facebook-owned photo-sharing app Instagram this week, cutting off Mark Zuckerberg and the Masters of the Universe from accessing the personal data of tens of millions of Russian users.

TechCrunch reports that Russia has blocked access to Instagram throughout the country, shortly after banning Facebook, alleging that the social media platform has discriminated against Russian media and information sources.

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks with Russia’s local authorities during a video link meeting at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow on October 4, 2021. (EVGENY PAULIN/SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images)

Mark Zuckerberg discusses Instagram (AFP/Getty)

Instagram is a popular social media platform in Russia with more users than Facebook, according to data from Senos Tower. WhatsApp, also owned by Facebook (now known as Meta) is the most popular social media service in the country.

Instagram has been installed approximately 166 million times across the Russian iOS App Store and Google Play store since 2014. Recently, Russian censor Roskomnadzor stated that the government would restrict access to the app following a 48-hours “transition period.”

Instagram head Adam Mosseri was quick to condemn Russia for the move via Twitter:

In a blog post, Roskomnadzor accused Instagram and Facebook’s parent company Meta of encouraging violence against Russians. The censor stated: “As you know, on March 11, Meta Platforms Inc. made an unprecedented decision by allowing the posting of information containing calls for violence against Russian citizens on its social networks Facebook and Instagram.”

Breitbart News reported last week that an email from Facebook stated that calls for violence against both Russian soldiers and Russians were permissible on the platform, as long as the context of the invasion of Ukraine was made clear:

“We are issuing a spirit-of-the-policy allowance to allow T1 violent speech that would otherwise be removed under the Hate Speech policy when: (a) targeting Russian soldiers, EXCEPT prisoners of war, or (b) targeting Russians where it’s clear that the context is the Russian invasion of Ukraine (e.g., content mentions the invasion, self-defense, etc.),” it said in the email.

Since then. the company has altered its policy, with Global Affairs President Nick Clegg stating in a post on the company’s internal platform: “We are now narrowing the focus to make it explicitly clear in the guidance that it is never to be interpreted as condoning violence against Russians in general. We also do not permit calls to assassinate a head of state…So, in order to remove any ambiguity about our stance, we are further narrowing our guidance to make explicit that we are not allowing calls for the death of a head of state on our platforms.”

Clegg added: “These are difficult decisions. Circumstances in Ukraine are fast moving. We try to think through all the consequences, and we keep our guidance under constant review because the context is always evolving.”