The Russian government has been on Twitter’s case and both parties are at loggerheads. According to the government, Twitter fails to delete contents that it believes is illegal. Last month, the social media giant was hit with a 3 million rubles ($41,000). Last Thursday, Twitter was fined 10 million rubles ($136,000) by a Russian court for the same reason. The latest report regarding Twitter and Russia shows that the Russian government has slammed another 3 million rubles ($41,000) fine on Twitter.
In recent months, Russia has taken a series of measures to strengthen the supervision of American technology companies and restrict access to online information. For this reason, Russia has been punishing companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
So far this year, Twitter has been fined at least 50 million rubles ($682,000) in Russia. In this regard, there is no official comment from Twitter. However, Twitter always claims that it does not allow its platform to promote illegal content.
In addition, an announcement from the Tagansky District Court of Moscow shows that Microsoft’s software development website, GitHub, will have to pay a 1 million rubles ($13,643) fine. The reason for this fine is the same as that of Twitter. Just like Twitter, there is also no official statement from GitHub as of now.
Gizchina News of the week
Russia to slap a $240 million fine on Google
Google is facing a couple of issues in different parts of the world. Today, the Russian communications regulatory agency, the Federal Agency for Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media Supervision (Roskomnadzor), announced today that it will issue a huge fine to Google before the end of the month. Roskomnadzor said that it will seek to impose a fine of 5% to 20% of its annual Russian revenue. The fine will get up to a maximum of $240 million U.S. dollars. The reason for this fine is that Google has repeatedly failed to delete content deemed illegal. This is by far the strongest punishment Russia has imposed on any foreign technology company.
Roskomnadzor had earlier fined Google for not deleting illegal content, but the fine was relatively small. Roskomnadzor said today that Google has not paid a fine of 32.5 million rubles (approximately $458,100) so far this year. In recent months, Russia has taken a series of measures to strengthen the supervision of American technology companies and restrict access to online information. For this reason, there have been punishments for companies like Apple, Google, Twitter, and Facebook.
According to Roskomnadzor, it will significantly increase the fines on American technology companies such as Google and Facebook. Roskomnadzor data shows that so far this year, Facebook has fines of up to 66 million rubles (approximately $900,000) to deal with. Similarly, Russia has hit Twitter and Google with 38.4 million rubles (approximately $542,000) and 26 million rubles (approximately $367,000) fines, respectively. In addition, other companies like Google and Apple have varying degrees of fines.
