Russian legislation signed by President Vladimir Putin has
obliged foreign social media companies with more than 500,000 daily users to
open local offices since July 2021 or be subject to restrictions as severe as
outright bans.
In November, state communications regulator Roskomnadzor
listed 13 companies it wanted to set up officially on Russian soil and last
month said it would start imposing restrictions by the end of February.
Ahead of Monday's deadline, only a few had complied.
Russia's invasion of Ukraine last week has added to pressure on Western
businesses to push back on Putin in any way possible.
The new rules also require companies to register with
Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor and have a system for fielding
user complaints.
Apple and Spotify had fully complied before fighting began
in Ukraine, and Roskomnadzor's website on Monday also showed Rakuten Group's
messaging app Viber had completed all required steps
Six other companies had fulfilled at least one policy but
had not established a Russian legal entity or local office. Those were Google,
Meta, Twitter, ByteDance's TikTok, Zoom, JOYY's video app Likee, the government
website showed late Monday.
Four companies - chat tool Discord, Amazon's live streaming
unit Twitch, messaging app Telegram and bookmarking service Pinterest - had
taken no steps to comply, according to the website.
Likee said its February 16 filing to form a Russian legal
entity is under review and that it plans to comply with the law. Twitter
declined to comment while the other 11 companies did not respond to requests
for comment.
Last month, Roskomnadzor said it would begin barring
non-compliant companies from selling advertisements in Russia. It previously
has said blocking access to the targeted services would be a last resort, and
that other penalties could include limiting data collection and money
transfers.
The regulation is a part of a wider campaign for Internet
control that critics say threatens individual and corporate freedom.
Authorities in Russia have issued small fines to social media companies in the
last year for ignoring their demands to censor anti-government activists or
information.
Russia, which calls its actions in Ukraine a "special
operation," has curtailed access to Facebook in recent days in retaliation
for censoring state media services, which critics say promote fake news and
propaganda. Twitter has also been slow to access on mobile devices.
Demand for virtual private networking (VPN) apps, which can
help with circumventing Internet restrictions, has surged in Russia amid the
latest crackdown.
Three of the top five most downloaded apps on Apple's App
Store on Monday were VPNs, and they generated a combined 383,000 installs over
the past seven days, 15 times more than the prior seven-day period, according
to estimates from tracker Sensor Tower.
Russia, which has a population of about 144 million, had
nearly 51 million users on Instagram and 7.5 million on Facebook as of last
November, according to research outfit Insider Intelligence. © Reuters