Facebook owner Meta bans Russian state media due to ‘foreign interference’

LONDON– Meta announced it would ban the Russian state media organization from its social media platforms, saying the organization had used deceptive tactics to amplify Moscow's propaganda. The announcement sparked a rebuke from the Kremlin on Tuesday.

The company, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, said late Monday that it would implement the ban in the next few days to step up its efforts to combat Russia's covert influence activities.

“After careful consideration, we have expanded our ongoing actions against Russian state media: Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other affiliates are now banned from our apps worldwide due to foreign interference activities,” Meta said in a prepared statement.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov lashed out, saying that “such selective measures against Russian media are unacceptable” and that “Meta is discrediting itself with these measures.”

“We have an extremely negative attitude towards this. And this, of course, complicates the prospects for normalizing our relations with Meta,” Peskov told reporters during his daily conference call.

RT (formerly known as Russia Today) and Russia Segodnya also condemned the move.

“It's sweet that there is a competition in the West – who can try to beat RT the hardest in order to make themselves look better,” RT said in a press release.

Rossiya Segodnya, the parent company of state news agency RIA Novosti and news brands such as Sputnik, said Meta's decision was “not unexpected for us”.

“Meta is a deeply politicized organization. We will continue our work in the countries where we are present and this decision will not affect our work,” Rossiya Segodnya said in a statement.

Meta's actions come days after the United States announced new sanctions against RT, accusing the Kremlin news channel of being a central part of Russia's war machine and its efforts to undermine its democratic opponents.

US authorities alleged last week that RT was working hand-in-hand with the Russian military, running fundraisers to finance sniper rifles, body armor and other equipment for soldiers fighting in Ukraine. They also said RT websites posed as legitimate news sites but were being used to spread disinformation and propaganda in Europe, Africa, South America and elsewhere.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two RT employees with secretly providing millions of dollars to a Tennessee-based content creation firm to post English-language social media videos with pro-Kremlin messages.

Moscow has denied the allegations.

Meta had already taken steps to limit Moscow's online reach. Since 2020, it has been labeling state-run media posts and content. Two years later, it banned Russian state-run media from running advertisements and placing their content lower in users' feeds. It also joined other social media outlets such as YouTube and TikTok in blocking EU users from accessing RT and Sputnik channels after they were sanctioned by Brussels. Also in 2022, Meta took down a widespread Russia-based disinformation network that spread Kremlin arguments about the invasion of Ukraine.

Meta and Facebook “blocked RT in Europe two years ago, now they are censoring the flow of information to the rest of the world,” RT said in a statement.

Moscow fought back by designating Meta as an extremist group in March 2022, shortly after it sent troops to Ukraine, and blocking Facebook and Instagram. Both platforms – as well as Elon Musk's X, formerly known as Twitter, which is also blocked – were popular among Russians before the invasion and subsequent crackdown on independent media and other forms of critical expression. The social media platforms are now only accessible through virtual private networks.

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Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, contributed to this report.