A Moscow court has fined TikTok 2.6 million rubles (some $34,000 at the current exchange rate) for refusing to delete information encouraging teenagers to join an unauthorized street protest in Moscow on January 24, TASS reported.
At that time, Russian social network aficionados, including millions of teenagers, had transformed TikTok into a digital rebellion hotspot. “Navalny stay alive,” “Putin’s Palace” and “23 January” – the date of an opposition-minded street protest – were among the most popular Russian-language hashtags on this network.
Evgeny Zaitsev, head of department at Roskomdazor, the state Internet regulator, conceded that TikTok is more active than other foreign social networks in removing posts urging minors to participate in unauthorized events. Nevertheless, the regulator has claims against this social network too, TASS notes.
Separate legal procedures are targeting Telegram, Twitter, Facebook and Google for the same offense, the news agency reports. The court will examine these cases in the forthcoming weeks, providing the companies some extra time to get prepared.
As reported by East-West Digital News, TikTok recently overtook Facebook and Twitter in social media use in Russia — still lagging far behind local network VK, however.
