Russia fines Facebook, Twitter on keeping Russian data abroad

A court is Moscow on Thursday fined the two social media giants Facebook and Twitter over ignoring Russian law that requires them to keep Russian users data inside Russia.

This has been a long running dispute between the two social media giants and Russia ever since 2014 when the law was passed requiring messaging services, search engines and social media platforms to keep Russian data inside the country.

Now the Moscow court has fined $63,000 to both companies failing to comply to the law and moving their servers containing the Russia data to the country.

These aren’t the only two services that have gotten into trouble with Russian law, Telegram and LinkedIn have already been blocked in the country.

Russia has been really strict over the internet activity in the country and has launched many cases against users over extremism and incitement to unrest after they posted or reposted messages about political protest or pictures judged as xenophobic on social media platforms like VK.

Many internet users have also been jailed because of it.

Russia even has plans to cut itself from the global internet and create its own Russian alternative that is being called the Sovereign Internet.

How Russia plans to do is get all of its internet service providers to reroute all traffic through Russian Telecommunications organization Roskomnadzor. They will be disconnected from the global internet and will be rerouted to Russian websites like VK instead of Facebook.

There have although been many protests regarding this matter.

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