Meta has banned Russian state media networks including Rossiya Segodnya and RT, saying they’re being used to carry out influence operations.
Just days after the U.S. announced new sanctions against Russian state media, Meta is pulling content from the sites from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.
“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets,” it said in a statement. “Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity.”
The U.S. Department of State now says that RT has shifted from being simply a media outlet to become an entity with cyber capabilities, carrying out information operations, covert influence, and military procurement.
“These operations are targeting countries around the world, including in Europe, Africa, and North and South America,” said a spokesperson.
“We are not taking action against these entities and individuals for the content of their reporting, or even the disinformation they create and spread publicly. We are taking action against them for their covert influence activities.”
According to US secretary of state Antony Blinken, RT’s cyber capabilities date back to the creation last year of a new unit with ties to Russian intelligence.
And the sanctions have been welcomed by other nations including the U.K.
“U.S. information shows that RT is engaged in information operations and covert influence across the world. These activities strike at the democratic foundations of other countries, using intelligence operations and shadowy networks to incite political violence, and spread dissent across the world,” said a Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office spokesperson.
“In its control of RT, we see the extent of the Russian state’s duplicity: weaponizing the media in order to spread lies, threaten global security and further its illegal invasion of Ukraine. We have seen these shoddy attempts to obscure the truth and they have failed.”
Meta’s latest move significantly extends the actions it’s already taken against RT. It began limiting Russian state-controlled media in 2022, blocking Russian state controlled media from running ads, placing their content lower in people’s feeds and adding in-product nudges asking users to confirm they want to share or navigate to content from these outlets.
It also blocked some Russian state media in the EU, U.K. and Ukraine after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; and according to Meta, external analysis by researchers at Graphika found that posting volumes and engagement levels dropped sharply afterwards. Since 2017, 39 covert influence networks have been disrupted, including some that have been linked to employees of Russian state media.
Meta says it strongly encourages influential figures to be on the alert for attempts to get them to amplify particular socio-political topics – and to keep their information security up to date.
