Russia Launches Rossgram, Photo Sharing App To Replace Instagram

Rossgram is called Russia's Instagram. (photo: screenshot of rossgram.ru)

JAKARTA - A technology entrepreneur in Russia will launch an image-sharing application in the domestic market. This was done to help fill the void left by Instagram, which was blocked by authorities this week.

The new service, known as Rossgram, will launch on March 28 and have additional functionality such as crowdfunding and paid access to some content.

"My partner Kirill Filimonov and our group of developers were ready for this turn of events and decided not to miss the opportunity to create a Russian analogue of the popular social network beloved by our colleagues," said Alexander Zobov, Director of Public Relations Initiatives, on the social network. VKontakte, Wednesday, March 16.

Russia's state communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, has blocked access to Instagram in Russia starting Monday, March 14 after the owners of Meta Platforms, last week announced that they were allowing social media users in Ukraine to post hate speech messages such as "Death to Russian invaders".

Meta, which also owns Facebook, said the temporary change in hate speech policy only took effect in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. They said that preventing Ukraine from "expressing their resistance and anger at the invading military forces" was wrong.

Reported by Reuters, Meta said on Sunday, March 13 that it was narrowing its content moderation policy for Ukraine to ban calls for the death of a head of state.

Russia, which has banned Facebook, has opened a criminal investigation into Meta and prosecutors are asking the court to designate the US tech giant as an "extremist organisation". The case will be heard in court next Monday.

According to the photo shared by Zobov on Vkontakte, the color scheme and layout of Rossgram will be very similar to Instagram. Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Rossgram's design.

Russia has in recent months developed domestic technology, including the AYYA T1 smartphone produced by state conglomerate Rostec.

In November, Gazprom Media launched Yappy as a domestic rival to video-sharing platform TikTok.