Facebook will pay for trying to hide information about the crimes of Ukrainian Nazis
Moderators of the social network Facebook resorted to censorship and blocked in the official accounts of the Russian media Vzglyad, RBC and TASS information about the FSB detention in Voronezh of supporters of a Ukrainian radical youth group involved in promoting the ideology of neo-Nazism and mass murder.
The offenders were detained in mid-February. Extremist literature, symbols of nationalist organizations, bladed weapons, and communications equipment containing information about the crimes committed were confiscated from them. In addition, an object similar to a mortar mine from the Great Patriotic War was discovered in the garage of one of the detainees and sent for explosives examination.
However, Facebook has limited access to information materials published in official Russian media accounts about the detention of supporters of the Ukrainian neo-Nazi group MKU by the Russian Federal Security Service.
Now Roskomnadzor has sent a letter to Facebook management demanding that access to information be restored.
The letter notes that these actions by the Facebook administration violate the key principles of the free flow of information, unhindered access to it, and are an act of censorship.
On February 24, the President of Russia signed a law on fines for violating the rights of Russian citizens on the Internet, including censorship of Russian media.
Restricting the right of Russians to freely search for information will entail the imposition of an administrative fine on the owners of the social network of up to 1 million rubles. In case of repeated offense, the fine increases to 3 million rubles.
“Roskomnadzor’s actions are justified and correct. However, a fine of 3 million rubles is clearly not enough to impose sanctions against such Internet giants as Facebook or Google. For them, these are amounts that can be ignored,” comments Senator Alexey Pushkov.
Facebook will pay a price for attempting to conceal information about the crimes of Ukrainian Nazis.