Instagram teams up with Russian service, deletes 321 suicide links

MOSCOW, Mar 2 (PRIME) -- The administration of social network Instagram has deleted 321 links to information on activities of “groups of death” as a result of cooperation with Russia’s Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, the service said Thursday in a statement.

“In the correspondence with the service’s top officials, representatives of Facebook, which manages Instagram, have confirmed their readiness to quickly resist distribution of illegal information,” the statement read.

A Facebook spokesperson said in a letter to the Russian authority’s head Alexander Zharov that messages on violations related to suicide and self harm are a priority for teams of Instagram and Facebook.

The State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, earlier started collecting feedback on a bill seeking to introduce criminal liability for organizers of so-called “groups of death.” Police conducted checks at administrators of such groups in 10 Russian regions and revealed that some of them tried to persuade minors via correspondence in groups of social network VKontakte to commit suicide.

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