Russia threatens to block Facebook

Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service which supervises the Communications, Information Technologies and Mass Communications spheres) is ready to block Facebook in 2018 if the company does not transfer all of its personal data regarding Russian people to the territory of Russia, stated Aleksandr Zharov, head of the agency.

“The law is mandatory for all. In any case, we will make sure the law is abided by or the company will cease to work on the territory of the Russian Federation as, unfortunately, it happened with Linkedin. There are no exceptions here,” stated the official.

Zharov said that Twitter has already agreed to transfer its data towards the middle of 2018. However, the company itself has not confirmed this information.

• Since September 2015, Russian law dictates that all data collected by online services on Russian people should only be kept in Russia. Moreover, the punishment for violating this law can lead to the service being blocked, which is possible after an inspection by Roskomnadzor.
• So far, such inspections have not taken place for larger online services such as Twitter, Google and Facebook.
• In 2016, one year after the law came into effect, the Linkedin site was blocked.