On Friday last week, Russia slapped tech giants Google and Meta with penalties totaling over $125 million for repeated failure to remove banned content, the media reported.
A Moscow magistrate’s court fined Google 7.2 billion rubles (around $98 million at the current exchange rate) under a legal clause that allows courts to impose between 5% and 10% of a company’s turnover, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
According to the RBC news website, Google Russia earned 85 billion rubles in 2020 ($1.17 billion at the average exchange rate of that year).
The court fined Meta, formerly Facebook, 1.9 billion rubles (nearly $26 million) later on Friday, also for failing to remove banned content.This is the first time Russia imposes fines based on a digital company’s turnover.
From child pornography to politically sensitive content
A few months ago, a representative of Roskomnadzor, the Internet and telecom regulator, which filed the lawsuits, described the violations as follows:
- “YouTube systematically fails to comply with the requirements to remove prohibited content. Since 2014, more than 3,000 illegal materials containing child pornography, suicidal, drug-related, fake, extremist and other content that are dangerous for Russian citizens have not been removed.”
- “Facebook Instagram and Facebook have not removed over 2,000 illegal materials, including those containing child pornography, suicidal, drug-related, extremist content.”
“Extremist” is how the authorities now tend to refer to any anti-Kremlin content. They have engaged in a power struggle with Apple and Google, in particular, to have them remove a sensitive app produced by their opponents in the run-up to the September parliamentary election.
Since the beginning of this year, Russian courts have been actively fining international online giants — from Facebook, to Google, to TikTok, to Twitter — for failing to remove unlawful content or to store personal data inside the country. However, the amounts have been rather modest so far, in the range of a few dozens of thousand US dollars.
Thus, in this period, Facebook has been targeted in nearly 20 matters related to prohibited content.
Could Google leave Russia?
Collecting fines from foreign companies is difficult when these do not have an official representative office or a subsidiary in Russia — which is the case of Facebook and Twitter.
However, this obstacle could be lifted by a new legislation that regulates the activity of large-traffic foreign sites and apps in Russia. Starting from 2022, their owners will be required to open a representative office in Russia.
Another fresh law establishes the “self-control” of social networks, mandating them to identify, moderate and block prohibited content on their own, i.e. without a court decision. Facebook, Instagram, Likee, TikTok, Twitter and YouTube are concerned, as well as top Russian social networks VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
Google said it will determine its next steps after examining the latest court ruling, RIA Novosti reported. Some industry observers believe the US company might consider stopping activities in Russia, while some others note that the authorities have been preparing to block access to any undesired foreign online resource.
