messenger service WhatsApp Citing a Moscow court, state-owned news agency RIA reported on Friday that Russia has been fined a maximum of 4 million rubles (about Rs 41 lakh) after accusing it of failing to remove banned content. .
Although the parent company of WhatsApp is meta platform Banned in Russia last year as an “extremist” organisation, the Messenger app – which is widely popular in Russia – has not previously been threatened with legal action for failing to remove banned information.
The RIA report did not specify what information WhatsApp failed to remove. It said the administrative case was filed by communications regulator Roskomnadzor.
At the start of its military campaign in Ukraine, Russia introduced tough new military censorship laws, including technology companies Google, Wikipedia And others have been fined.
Earlier this month, a Russian court Fined Alphabet’s Google fined RUB 3 million (roughly Rs. 31 lakh) for failing to remove a YouTube video it said promoted “LGBT propaganda” and “misinformation” about Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.
Russia in April acted out Moscow is campaigning to crack down on independent sources of information for failing to remove content deemed extremist against the Wikimedia Foundation, owner of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.
The foundation’s Russia chapter previously said it believed the other fines could be overturned, but that the number of cases against it could rise given the number of articles on Wikipedia about the conflict.
In July last year, a Moscow court imposed Chat service WhatsApp was fined 18 million rubles (roughly Rs. 2,40,00,00) and disappearing messaging platform Snapchat was fined 1 million rubles. The fine followed a complaint by Russia’s state communications regulator, Roskomnadzor.