Russia imposes huge fines on Google and Meta over undeleted content

A Russian court has imposed large fines on Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta for allegedly refusing to delete “forbidden content.”

Google was ordered to pay 7.2 billion roubles (98 million dollars) and Meta, which also owns Instagram, nearly 2 billion roubles (27 million dollars).

According to the court rulings cited by news agency Interfax on Friday, the amount of the fines was based for the first time on the annual turnover of the corporations in Russia.

The US search giant Google said it wanted to study the ruling in detail before discussing further steps.

Google and Facebook have already been fined several times in Russia, as have Twitter and TikTok.

Russian authorities have been targeting social networks especially since the mass protests at the beginning of the year against the imprisonment of Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny.

They accuse the platforms of not consistently removing messages calling for unauthorized demonstrations, child pornography content or suicide calls.

Internet activists criticize the actions as repression against a free internet in Russia.

The deputy head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Anton Gorelkin, said that “very unpleasant measures” would be taken if fines did not help.