TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, fined three million rubles
Russia has fined TikTok for failing to remove content that violates Russian “pro-LGBTQ propaganda” laws and streaming service Twitch over an interview with a Ukrainian politician that Moscow says contained “false” information.
TikTok, owned by Beijing-based company ByteDance, was fined three million rubles, Moscow’s Tagansky District Court said.
News outlets reported that the case against TikTok was based on accusations that the company “promotes non-traditional values, LGBTQI, feminism and a distorted representation of traditional sexual values” on its platform.
Twitch, owned by Amazon, was fined four million rubles, the court said. News agencies reported that the case was sparked by an interview hosted on Twitch with Oleksiy Arestovich, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Twitch was fined three million rubles earlier this year due to another Arestovich interview.
Russia passed a law in early March, shortly after sending tens of thousands of troops to Ukraine, banning “defamation” of the armed forces, with penalties of up to 15 years. Foreign technology companies have been warned not to break the law.
TASS reported today that Twitch faces two new fines of up to eight million rubles for failing to delete what Russia considers unreliable information about the progress of its “special military operation” in Ukraine.
Russia is considering expanding its existing “homosexual propaganda” law, passed in 2013, which prohibits any person or entity from promoting homosexual relationships to children. MPs have argued that the law should be extended to include adults and that fines for exposing minors to “LGBTQ propaganda” should be increased.
Russian authorities say they are protecting morality against what they say are un-Russian liberal values ​​promoted by the West, but human rights activists say the law is widely applied to intimidate Russia’s LGBTI community.
In a separate development, the Wikimedia Foundation, which hosts the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, also faces a fine of four million rubles for failing to delete “fake news” about the Russian military, the RIA news agency reported.
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