Facebook’s owner has announced the move after Washington claimed Russian outlets are espionage offshoots.
US tech giant Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has banned several Russian news networks, including RT. Since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Meta has been cooperating with a prohibition on RT imposed by the EU and other individual Western nations.
In a statement on Monday, the company said the deplatforming of the media outlets from its apps is due to “foreign interference activity” and would be implemented globally over the next several days.
The US government sanctioned RT last week, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken claiming that the outlet is “functioning as a de facto arm of [Russian] intelligence.”
Moscow has called the move an act of information warfare, which exposes America’s inability to fairly compete with Russian media.
US officials have expressed frustration with RT’s role in offering an alternative to Washington-backed narratives on international affairs.
“One of the reasons – not the only reason – why so much of the world has not been as fully supportive of Ukraine as you would think they would be, given that Russia has invaded Ukraine and violated rule number 1 of the international system – is because of the broad scope and reach of RT, where propaganda, disinformation, and lies is spread to millions if not billions around the world,” State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin told journalists on Friday, following Blinken’s remarks.
RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan joked that RT had learned from the Americans, rather than from Russian intelligence officers.
“Seriously? Did you run out of mirrors?” she asked, commenting on the American allegations.
Meta has faced legal issues in Russia after allowing exemptions in its rules forbidding hate speech.
Meta management ruled that Ukrainians were entitled to call for violence against Russians and to hail extreme nationalists fighting against Russia on its platforms. Moscow labeled Meta an extremist organization and banned Facebook and Instagram in Russia.
RT has a huge base of followers around the world the US MSM could only dream of. Its small wonder the establishment have resorted to censorship. I wont work, of course, but its all they have left. Well that and international law fare, which has no effect inside of Russia. So censorship it is!
fascist always censor their opposition….they have no other tactic to prevent the truth from spreading…..more to come.
META banning anything is in my opinion a PERFECT reason to support what META has banned even more. Personally, I banned META quite a while ago and will continue banning that platform of filth and dis-mis information. META is for dumb rs’s.
This proves that the little Talmudic J3w is above the law as demonstrated in the U.S. Senate Sub-Committee hearings…or so he thinks..!
Underground bunkers in Hawaii, billions of dollars and Krav-Maga won’t save him in the end…
Typical CIA asset accommodation for an Ivy League (J3wi$h) Harvard University drop-out!
God Bless Russian President Putin for allowing Conservative Christians who are being targeted and persecuted in the West to migrate to Russia under immigration rules that are changing.