Russia blocks Facebook, restricts Twitter access

The Russian government has officially blocked Facebook and has restricted Twitter in the country.

The regulator, Roskomnadzor, said there had been 26 cases of discrimination against Russian media by Facebook since October 2020, including restrictions in recent days on state-backed channels like RT and the RIA news agency, Reuters has reported.

Meta’s head of global affairs Nick Clegg said the company would continue to do everything it could to restore its services.

“Soon millions of ordinary Russian will find themselves cut off from reliable information, deprived of their everyday ways of connecting with family and friends and silenced from speaking out,” he said, in a statement posted on Twitter.

Meta in a blog said it was working to keep its services available “to the greatest extent possible” but it had stopped showing ads to users in Russia and barred Russian advertisers from running ads anywhere in the world “due to the difficulties of operating in Russia at this time.”