Roskomnadzor Is Getting Tougher On Twitter Law, Beside Fines, The Speed Also Decreased

The Russian government will continue to slow down the speed of Twitter on mobile devices. (photo: unsplash)

JAKARTA – The Russian government will continue to slow down Twitter's speed on mobile devices until all content deemed illegal by the government is removed. This statement comes from the country's communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, as quoted by Reuters. This effort was made by Moscow, which continues to take US Big Tech to court.

Russian authorities have recently taken steps to regulate the tech giant more strictly by imposing small fines for content violations. On the other hand, they are also trying to force foreign companies to have official representatives in Russia and keep Russian personal data on its territory.

Twitter itself has experienced a slowdown as a punishment in Russia since March for postings alleged to contain child pornography, drug abuse information, or solicitations for minors to commit suicide, Roskomnadzor said.

Twitter, which did not immediately comment on the allegations on Monday, November 29. But they deny having allowed their platform to be used to promote illegal behavior. Twitter claims to have a zero-tolerance policy for child sexual exploitation and prohibits the promotion of suicide or self-harm.

Twitter users in Russia will experience a bit of annoyance while watching Videos and photos as they are noticeably slower to load on mobile devices. However, Roskomnadzor eased twitter speed restrictions on fixed networks in May.

Roskomnadzor said Twitter, which has been fined a total of 38.4 million rubles (Rp7.3 billion) this year, was deemed to have systematically ignored requests to remove banned material since 2014. Twitter itself admits, but has removed more than 90% of illegal posting.

"As of now, there are still 761 undeleted posts," Roskomnadzor said in response to a Reuters question. "The condition for lifting access restrictions on mobile devices is that Twitter completely removes prohibited material detected by Roskomnadzor."

Roskomnadzor said it would seek fines on the annual turnover of Google Alphabet and Facebook in Russia for repeated violations of the law. But the threat was not commented on by the two social media companies.

"We also reiterate that the social network Twitter has been repeatedly found guilty by Russian courts of administrative offenses," Roskomnadzor said.