According to Roskomnadzor, the body of the Russian Federation that controls communications and related blackout, privacy and radio frequencies, Instagram will soon be inaccessible in Russia.
The ban would come in response to the recent “temporary” changes to the rules made by Zuckerberg’s social network that makes it possible to speak out against Russian soldiers, Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Lukashenko, even with phrases that “incite hatred and violence”.
He instead censors unchanged if the hate message is addressed to Russian civilians. Facebook’s new policy only applies in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia and Ukraine.
Although Facebook has already been “restricted” in Russia for over a week, Instagram was still not affected by any restrictive measures. However, the state news agency TASS had already reported the willingness of Russian lawmakers to impose a ban on the use of the app in response to the change in the rules made by Meta.
Roskomnadzor started on Telegram that the ban will take effect starting next March 14:
Messages are circulating on the social network Instagram encouraging and provoking violent acts against the Russians, in connection with which the Russian Attorney General’s office has asked Roskomnadzor to restrict access to the social network. Roskomnadzor has decided to complete the procedure. to impose restrictions on access to Instagram starting at 00:00 on March 14, providing users with an additional 48-hour transition period.
At the moment, Facebook has not yet released any official statement on the matter. A spokesperson for the company had said in recent days that it had changed the rules to allow more “forms of political expression” regarding the military aggression made by Russia against Ukraine.