Russia threatens to impose a huge fine on "Facebook" for this reason
Russia threatened Facebook on Tuesday with a fine that could exceed hundreds of millions of euros for failing to withdraw content Moscow considers illegal, in a new episode of Moscow's crackdown on Internet giants.
The Russian communications authority, "Roskomnadzor," said in a statement that this amount could amount to "between 5% and 10% of the annual turnover" of the American company in Russia.
This percentage may be equivalent to tens of billions of rubles (several hundreds of millions of euros), according to the Russian economic newspaper "Vedomosti".
Roskomnadzor announced that it had filed a complaint against Facebook for its repeated refusal to delete "dangerous" information published on its network and on Instagram, which is also owned by the American group.
She noted that the Russian court will have to determine the amount of the possible fine.
Facebook has already been fined 90 million rubles for several violations, according to Russian media, but they are small amounts compared to the fines now threatening the social network, according to the Russian Communications Authority.
Russia regularly sanctions large digital companies for not removing content that promotes drugs or suicide or is linked to dissent.
In September, ahead of legislative elections, Moscow forced Apple and Google to pull the app of jailed dissident Alexei Navalny from their virtual stores in Russia.
The authorities threatened to arrest employees of the two companies in Russia unless they cooperated, according to internal sources.
Russian authorities have consolidated their control over the internet, the last space still available for Kremlin critics to express their opinions relatively freely.
Moscow recently blocked VPNs used to circumvent censorship of opposition websites.
In parallel, the authorities are developing a controversial "sovereign Internet" that will allow in the future to isolate the Russian Internet by separating it from major global servers.
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