Meta bans Russian state media outlets globally across its platforms
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The US tech giant alleges that its decision was due to the Russian state media outlets engaging in "foreign interference activity."
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A smartphone and a computer screen display the logos of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and their parent company Meta in 2023. (AFP)
US tech giant Meta announced on Monday that it is banning Russian state media outlets from its apps globally over allegations of "foreign interference activity."
The company, which owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads, responded to an AFP inquiry saying, "After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets."
"Rossiya Segodnya, RT, and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," it said.
This comes following allegations by the United States that RT and its employees in the country have funneled millions of dollars via shell companies to finance "influence campaigns" on social media outlets such as TikTok, Instagram, X, and YouTube.
According to the indictment unsealed in New York, the news outlet was forced to halt formal operations in the UK, Canada, the European Union, and the US as a result of sanctions imposed following the start of the war with Ukraine in February 2022.
Read more: FBI cracks downs on US citizens to prevent 'Kremlin influence'
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said last week that Moscow will respond to US sanctions targeting Russian media and all its other adversarial actions.
"They [the US] will have to understand that no action against our country will remain unanswered," Zakharova stressed.
In a separate statement earlier this week, Zakharova described the US allegations as an attempt by Washington to maintain control over global public opinion and its image of infallibility.
She argued that the issue is not related to Ukraine or US elections, but rather to the suppression of alternative viewpoints. She claimed that Russian news outlets challenge the US's "myth of exclusivity" and dismantle the illusion of a "non-existent Pax Americana" shaped by American culture and media.
"We are no longer talking about sanctions. We haven’t been discussing sanctions for a long time; we are talking about persecution. This is what is being done to RT and generally to Russian media. This is the persecution of our country’s entire civil society."
