Facebook Bans RT and Other Russian State Media

Meta – the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp – said on Monday that Russian state media outlets have been banned from its platforms worldwide for “foreign interference activity.” 

Meta said its expanded “enforcement against Russian state media outlets” was undertaken after “careful consideration.”

The ban specifically included RT, formerly known as “Russia Today,” and Rossiya Segodnya, which owns Sputnik News and RIA Novosti. Meta’s announcement said it would ban “other related entities” as well.

Meta first began taking action against Russian disinformation operations about two years ago. Monday’s action was a sharp escalation, possibly prompted by new sanctions against Russian state media announced by the U.S. State Department on Friday.

The State Department sanctions targeted RT, which Secretary of State Antony Blinken accused of maintaining “covert intelligence capabilities” and “longstanding propaganda disinformation efforts.”

Blinken said RT’s staff includes a “unit with cyber-operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence.”

“Our most powerful antidote to Russia’s lies is the truth. It’s shining a bright light on what the Kremlin is trying to do under the cover of darkness,” Blinken said.

Two weeks ago, the Department of Justice (DoJ) unsealed an indictment against two Russian nationals working for RT who allegedly funded several “covert projects” in the United States, including $10 million funneled to Tennessee-based Tenet Media.

RT had a sizable presence on Meta platforms before the ban, with about 7 million followers on Facebook and over a million on Instagram.

The Russians did not take their eviction from Facebook and Instagram well. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov furiously accused Meta’s platforms of “discrediting themselves” with “selective actions against Russian media.”

“We have an extremely negative attitude towards this. And this, of course, complicates the prospects for normalizing our relations with Meta,” Peskov fumed in a conference call with reporters on Tuesday.

“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 response to its ban.

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

“Don’t worry, where they close a door, and then a window, our ‘partisans’ – or in your parlance, guerrilla fighters – will find the cracks to crawl through, as by [the] Biden administration’s admission, we are apt at doing,” RT taunted.

Other social media platforms have taken action to restrict or ban Russian state media in recent months. YouTube banned RT, Sputnik, and other Russian media outlets in March, for example.