Problems for Google and Meta as they get slammed with big fines by the Russian court

We think. having big companies doesn’t mean that they don’t have anything to worry about, like money problems or staff problems or something like that. But what we forget is that like every other company they can also make mistakes sometimes and well their mistakes can prove quite costly for them.

The same thing happened to Google and Meta as they are currently facing a huge fine that is being imposed on them by the Russian court on Friday, as reported by AP. The companies are being accused of not taking down banned content and for that Google has received a fine of around $100 million which is 7.2 billion rubles whereas Meta (Facebook's parent company) is facing a fine of $27 million (2 billion rubles).

How did things get to this point? Well the Tagansky Districtcourt in Russia says that they had informed Google and Meta to remove posts and content that were promoting extremism and religious hatred, that would lead to dangerous situations and that is what the court doesn’t want.

They have further stated that Facebook and Instagram combined have failed to delete around 2,000 posts whereas Google has failed to delete around 2,600 posts that the court had requested.

This year, the court had already placed small fines towards Google, Facebook and Twitter. This ruling marks the first large sum fine that is being imposed by the court, which is totally based on the revenue of the companies. They have also warned them that they would face more revenue based fines if they fail to comply with the orders again. This is the first time that a Moscow court has calculated a fine based on a company’s revenue.

A few months ago, the concerned authorities also criticized some companies for not removing the announcements about the protests in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

The Russian agencies are already on the charge with them taking the internet by storm. They have started to create pressure and chaos on social media which is accusing the companies for their ignorance towards drug abuse, extreme comments and weapons.

The head of the committee on information policies Mr. Alexander Khinshten who works in the lower house in the Russian parliament said that these huge fines would open the eyes of the companies and would stand as a clear message to all of them.

Furthermore he said the Russian government can also impose other kinds of bans towards them if found necessary which includes slowing down internet traffic or they can even block it completely.


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