Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Alexei Nikolsky | Reuters
Russia has announced that it is imposing restrictions on the social media platform Twitter for failing to remove illegal content from its platform.
The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Communications, also known as Roskomnadzor, announced on Wednesday that it is slowing down Twitter.
The communications watchdog said it is taking steps to keep Russian citizens safe and that it could end up blocking the service completely if Twitter does not respond accordingly.
Twitter did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Speeds will be reduced on all mobile devices and on 50% of non-mobile devices, such as computers, Roskomnadzor said in a statement on its website.
Roskomnadzor accused Twitter of failing to remove content that encourages minors to commit suicide, as well as child pornography and drug use.
The regulator said he asked Twitter to remove links and posts more than 28,000 times between 2017 and March 2021. He said other social networks were more cooperative than Twitter in removing content that encourages minors to commit suicide.
Russia’s decision to restrict Twitter follows similar actions by governments in Turkey and India, which have also threatened prison terms for platform executives.
Matt Navarra, a social media consultant, told CNBC that “the threat of restricting, blocking or banning social media platforms appears to be a growing trend for countries notorious for tougher and less democratic regimes”.
Social media platforms are in a constant battle to keep inappropriate content off their platforms. Facebook, TikTok, YouTube and Twitter use a combination of software and human content moderators to police what is shared on their platforms, but none of them really dominate content moderation.
One of the most infamous recent examples was the Christchurch sniper, who broadcast his mass murder live on Facebook and other platforms. The video was quickly cloned and reshared by other users faster than content moderators were able to remove it, and it can still be found on Facebook several weeks after the attack.