There is no reason to unblock Twitter in Russia now, declared Roskomandzor in a TASS comment. Earlier, State Duma Deputy Anton Gorelkin proposed to remove the blocking of the social network after some changes in his policy.
“There is currently no reason to lift restrictions on foreign services,” Roskomnadzor said.
The regulator noted that at present, Twitter has not removed 1.3 thousand prohibited content. According to Roskomnadzor, child pornography, narcotic and suicidal content, calls for participation in riots, messages from extremist organizations, as well as forgeries, in particular about the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, are disseminated on the social network.
“The spread of other destructive content that contradicts traditional Russian spiritual and moral values ​​continues on the social network,” the department added.
Twitter was blocked in Russia on March 4, 2022, after the start of the Russian-Ukrainian military conflict. Days before the blockage, Roskomnadzor said the social network had become a platform for disseminating “socially significant inaccurate information” about the course of hostilities. On April 10, Anton Gorelkin, deputy chairman of the State Duma committee on information policy, offered to unblock Twitter after the social network stopped hiding the accounts of Russian state bodies and began branding Western publications as “state-funded media” – in particular, the UK edition of the BBC received such a brand. Gorelkin’s proposal was supported by Ekaterina Mizulina, director of the Safe Internet League. However, the first deputy chairman of the State Duma for information policy Alexander Yushchenko declared who sees no reason to unblock Twitter, because today the social network “leads an absolutely hostile policy” towards Russia, and its audience is “rather frenetic and mostly pro-Ukrainian”.
The removal of content contrary to Russian law, Roskomnadzor began to demand from Twitter a few years ago. In 2021, the department technically slowed down the work of the social network in Runet in order to force its administration to comply with the requirements (The Eastern Herald explained how it was done here). Soon, the RKN said that Twitter had shown its willingness to cooperate, so its blocking would not be necessary. However, after the start of the military operation in Ukraine, access to the social network was blocked.
Read the latest news about the Ukraine conflict on The Eastern Herald .
