Russia continued to crackdown on social media platforms and the critical opinions on them amid its ongoing invasion of Ukraine. A week after blocking Facebook and restricting access to Twitter, it was the former’s platform Instagram that was also put on the blocked list. The decision was condemned by the head of the social media platform, Adam Mosseri. Mosseri believed that the step would lead to Russians being ‘cut off’ not just from each other, but also from the rest of the world.
Instagram head Adam Mosseri unhappy over the decision to block the platform in Russia
Mosseri expressed his displeasure in a tweet, stating that Instagram would be blocked in the country from Monday. Sharing the statistics of the number of users who would be affected by the move, he said that 80 million Instagram users would thus be unable to communicate with the people from the country. Mosseri also stated that it would lead to the users being unable to communicate or follow news, trends or people from other countries, as 80 per cent of Instagram users in the country follows an account from outside the country. He concluded his tweet with the words, ‘This is wrong.’
On Monday, Instagram will be blocked in Russia. This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as ~80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) March 11, 2022
Russia blocks Instagram, WhatsApp after blocking Facebook and restricting Twitter
Instagram, as per a report on The Washington Post, would be inaccessible for people in Russia from Friday night. Russia’s prosecutor general termed Meta, the parent company of the platforms, as an ‘extremist organisation.’ It accused the company of triggering ‘hatred and enmity’ towards the Russian citizens. A similar decree was issued, as per a report on Independent, against WhatsApp, which is also a part of the Marc Zuckerberg-led company.
When Facebook had been blocked last week, Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg had said that it would take efforts to restore its service. Clegg had said that millions of Russians would be cut off from ‘reliable information’, deprived of communicating with their loved ones, and ‘silenced’ from expressing their thoughts. He said the company would ‘continue to do everything’ to restore the services so that people ‘safely and securely express themselves and organise for action.”