The two Russian media, considered powerful propaganda tools, are banned from the social networks of the Meta group, but also from Youtube
and of TikTok
.
As Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine, the European Union has imposed far-reaching economic sanctions on Moscow, but also numerical ones on the part of the West. In the wake of statements by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who wants to ban the media RT (Russia Today) and Sputnik from the area, several renowned social platforms have in turn announced, over the past 48 hours, having banned the two Russian media from their platforms.
Inaccessible pages on several major social networks
The digital giants have decided to follow in the footsteps of, or even anticipate, European Union sanctions. The Meta group announced on Monday that it had restricted access to the RT and Sputnik pages and accounts of its two flagship social networks, Facebook and Instagram, throughout Europe. In other words, since the beginning of the week, users of the Old Continent no longer have access to the two Russian media from the two platforms.
Nick Clegg, the public affairs boss of Mark Zuckerberg’s group, said he had received requests from several European Union countries, all wanting to take additional measures regarding Russian state-controlled media. ” Given the exceptional nature of the current situation, we will restrict access to RT and Sputnik across the EU for now “, he specified on Twitter.
The Meta group was overtaken on Monday afternoon by TikTok, which made videos from RT and Sputnik inaccessible on its platform. The Chinese social network, owned by the giant ByteDance, obviously wanted to mark the occasion.
The State calls on the platforms to take their responsibilities
Tuesday afternoon, another social media giant decided to crack down. YouTube, Google’s video platform, has indeed announced to our colleagues at AFP that it has blocked the channels of the two Russian media, ” with immediate effect “. In addition to the Meta, Google and ByteDance groups, and before the publication of official European regulations in this area, Twitter, Microsoft, Qwant and Snap were asked to block the accounts of RT and Sputnik in turn.
On France Inter today, the Secretary of State in charge of the Digital Transition and Electronic Communications, Cédric O, confirmed having met, the day before, the French representatives of the main social networks on the planet. He thus asked them to anticipate, on their platforms, the blocking or deletion of the accounts, pages and channels of RT and Sputnik, following the example of what had been done, a year earlier, with the former US President Donald Trump.
RT and Sputnik defend themselves, Cédric O strongly challenges Twitter
For their part, the two Russian media each responded to the actions taken against them. Sputnik, for example, invites its users to consult its content via… Telegram. He even delivers the trick of the VPN (quoting several) for those who wish to access his YouTube channel, which is only blocked in Europe. RT, for its part, indicates that it has noted the blocking of its Telegram page and denounces the suspension of its pages on the various digital platforms. The media’s YouTube channel has nearly 1.2 million subscribers.
The French pages of RT and Sputnik were still accessible on the French version of Twitter when these lines were written. But each tweet from these accounts is accompanied by the mention “ State-affiliated media, Russia “. A statement severely denounced and deemed largely insufficient by Cédric O: “ I say it and repeat it even more here: Twitter must take responsibility. Mere warning messages in the current situation are ridiculous and indecent. »
The National Union of Journalists (SNJ), which recalls that ” quite logically, the editorial positioning of RT France is often discussed and contested “, however, considers that ” attacking journalists, expelling them, banning the channels or newspapers in which they work constitutes, whatever the intentions displayed, an act of censorship which reduces the pluralism of information “.
Sources: SNJ
, France TV News
RT, Sputnik, AFP
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