Source: AFP
Meta announced late Monday that it was banning Russian state media from its apps worldwide due to “foreign interference activity.”
The ban comes after the United States accused RT and government officials of funneling $10 million through shell entities to covertly fund influencer campaigns on social media channels including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube, according to a unsealed indictment.
“After careful consideration, we have expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media,” Meta said in response to an AFP inquiry.
“Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities have now been blocked from our applications globally for foreign interference activity.”
RT was forced to halt official operations in Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States due to sanctions following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, according to the indictment unsealed in New York.
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US prosecutors cited an RT editor who said he created an “entire empire of covert projects” designed to shape public opinion among “Western audiences”.
According to the indictment, one of the secret projects involved financing and running an online content creation company in Tennessee.
Russia has been the biggest source of covert influence operations Meta has disrupted on its platform since 2017, and such efforts at deceptive online influence have increased since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, according to threat reports regularly published by the social media giant.
Meta previously banned the Federal News Agency in Russia to prevent foreign interference activities by the Russian Internet Research Service.
The US State Department in September said it was making diplomatic efforts to inform governments around the world about Russia’s use of RT to conduct covert activities and to encourage them to take action to limit “Russia’s ability to interfere in foreign elections and procure weapons for war against Ukraine.”
Source: AFP
