PRESS: Service to check Facebook in 2018, no blocking in view

MOSCOW, May 25 (PRIME) -- The Russian communications service will check Facebook in 2018 for its fulfilment of the country’s laws, but blocking of the social network is out of the question so far, the authority’s Director Alexander Zharov told the Izvestia daily in an interview, seen by PRIME on Friday.

“We’ll check company Facebook by the end of the year. It is no way that we will immediately raise a question of blocking. Depending on results of the check, we could fine them, obtain legally important documents when they intend to respect laws of the Russian Federation. This process will start at the end of this year,” Zharov said.

Facebook works in Russia and must follow the country’s laws. “First of all, it is the law on the localization of databases of our citizens on the territory of the Russian Federation and due deletion of banned content, and not everything is good at Facebook in this regard,” he said.

Distribution of unreliable information in social networks is “a sore subject” today. “There should be responsibility for fake news, but its form needs discussions. More often such information spreads via social networks with encoded traffic,” Zharov said.

It is impossible to block a single Facebook account, because such a move will paralyze the whole social network due to its infrastructure. “This is why we should discuss other ways of censure, possibly financial ones,” he said.

In April, the State Duma, the parliament’s lower house, approved the first reading of a bill fining a refusal to delete unreliable information and defamation distributed in social networks with up to 50 million rubles.

(61.4090 rubles – U.S. $1)

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