The Russian state media saw its account restricted on February 28, on Facebook and Instagram. It is still possible to access it from the United States, AFP reports.
According to the report, Facebook and Instagram have announced, through their parent company spokesperson Meta, that Russian state media accounts RT and Sputnik are now “restricted” in European Union territories.
“We have received requests from some governments and the European Union to take further action against Russian state media. Due to the exceptional situation ( Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 last February, editor’s note ), we are restricting access to RT and Sputnik in the European Union,” said Nick Clegg, communications director for Meta and former British deputy prime minister.
The countries where Russian state media has been restricted are:
Ukraine- Bulgaria- Estonia- Luxembourg- Spain- Slovenia- Poland- Hungary- Ireland- Malta- Lithuania- Czech Republic- Portugal- Greece- France- Romania- Finland- Cyprus- Italy- Netherlands- Austria- Germany- Slovakia- Croatia- Belgium- Latvia- Sweden – Denmark
In fact, the Facebook and Instagram accounts of RT France, the French subsidiary of RT, became inaccessible on the evening of February 28, in the same way as all international editions of RT, BFMTV reports.
However, they have not been deleted for all that: if they are now inaccessible from France, they remain accessible from the United States, according to the observations of BFMTV.
According to the report by French station, BFMTV, the Secretary of State for Digital Cédric O assured this February 28 “to be impatient” that the American digital giants are taking such measures to counter what is described by the government and the EU as Russian propaganda. , against the background of the war in Ukraine.
In the next few hours, a text from the European Union should come to frame this banishment of RT and Sputnik in the EU. Still, with BFMTV, Cédric O explains that he expects him to impose on all platforms to ban access to Russian state media accounts on social networks, but also to their respective websites.
In France, the Facebook account of RT France has 1.6 million subscribers. It generated around a million interactions – the sum of reactions, comments and shares – in February alone, as many as the French public media franceinfo.
The other platforms, starting with YouTube and Twitter, should soon announce equivalent sanctions.
(AFP)