Russian court fines Google $100 million and Facebook-parent Meta $27 million

In the latest move by Russia to ramp up pressure on foreign technology giants, a Moscow court on Friday fined Google and Facebook’s parent company Meta $100 million and $27 million respectively, for their repeated failure to comply with local laws and remove content that is deemed illegal in Russia.

The Tagansky District Court ruled that Google had repeatedly neglected to remove the banned content, and ordered the company to pay an administrative fine of about 7.2 billion rubles ($100 million). Google has responded to the ruling and has said that it will carefully examine the court documents before deciding its next steps.

Later in the day, the court also slapped an administrative fine of 1.9 billion rubles ($27 million) on Meta for the same reasons. Meta has yet to respond.

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Russian courts had previously imposed smaller fines on Google, Facebook and Twitter this year. The Moscow court’s Friday rulings marked the first time the size of the fine was calculated based on revenue. Meanwhile, Alexander Khinshtein, head of the committee on information policies in the lower house of Russian parliament, has said that the massive fine should send a clear message to all IT giants.

Russian authorities have steadily ramped up pressure on social media platforms, accusing them of failing to purge content related to drug abuse, weapons, and explosives. Earlier this year, authorities criticized tech companies for not deleting announcements and posts about unsanctioned protests in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

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Russian authorities have also ramped up pressure on foreign technology giants with regard to data localization, and have demanded that the personal data of Russian citizens be stored on servers on Russian soil. Moscow has also warned that failure to comply will be met with further fines, slowing down of traffic, and possible bans.

(With inputs from AP)