In what has become the latest development in an escalating standoff between Russia and Big Tech, a Russian court has fined U.S. technology giants Google and Facebook Inc over a failure to delete content that Moscow deems illegal.
According to local reports, Russia has already placed a punitive slowdown on U.S. social network Twitter for not deleting banned content, part of a push by Moscow to rein in Western tech companies and beef up what it calls its internet “sovereignty.”
NCNC gathered from multiple reports that Facebook was fined 26 million roubles (US$353,890) in total, on eight separate counts, while Alphabet Inc’s Google was ordered to pay a total of 6 million roubles for three different offences, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court said.
In separate statements, the court said both companies were guilty of administrative offences.
It was stated that the charges concern posts that Russia says encouraged minors to join unsanctioned protests in January, when people across the country took to the streets to support Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny after he was detained.
Meanwhile, the fines come amid a wider spat between Moscow and Google. In a statement, Russia’s communications watchdog warned that Moscow could eventually slow down the company’s traffic in the country if it failed to delete prohibited content.
