Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Alexei Nikolsky | Reuters
Russia has announced that it will impose restrictions on the social media platform Twitter for not removing illegal content from its platform.
The Federal Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Communications Oversight Service, also known as Roskomnadzor, announced on Wednesday that it is slowing down Twitter’s speed.
The communications watchdog said it was taking measures to protect Russian citizens and could eventually block the service completely if Twitter doesn’t respond accordingly.
Twitter did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Speeds will be reduced on all mobile devices and 50% of non-mobile devices, such as computers, Roskomnadzor said in a statement on its website.
Roskomnadzor accused Twitter of not removing content that encourages minors to commit suicide, as well as child pornography and drug use.
The regulator said it had asked Twitter more than 28,000 times to remove links and publications between 2017 and March 2021. It said other social networks were more cooperative than Twitter in removing content encouraging minors to commit suicide.
Russia’s attempt to stifle Twitter follows similar actions by governments in Turkey and India who have also threatened jail time for platform execs.
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, less democratic regimes.”
Social media platforms are constantly fighting to keep inappropriate content from their platforms. Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter all use a combination of software and human content moderators to control what’s being shared on their platforms, but none of them have really mastered content moderation.
One of the most infamous recent examples was the Christchurch gunman who livestreamed his mass murder on Facebook and other platforms. The video was quickly cloned and reshared by other users, faster than the content moderators could remove it, and it could still be found on Facebook for several weeks after the attack.