WhatsApp will pay a fine of 3 million roubles ($37,080), a Russian court has ordered. The Meta-owned company failed to delete illegal content.
A Russian court has ordered Meta-owned messaging company WhatsApp to pay a fine of 3 million roubles ($37,080).
This was the first time such a sanction was imposed in Russia. According to media sources, the order was issued on Thursday as WhatsApp failed to erase the forbidden information.
WhatsApp’s parent firm, Meta Inc, was barred from operating in Russia in 2022 after being labeled as a ‘extremist’ organization. WhatsApp, on the other hand, is a popular program among Russians and has never been penalized for failing to delete unlawful content, according to the study.
Other Meta services, like as Facebook and Instagram, have been penalized for content and are now banned in Russia, along with Twitter and Alphabet’s Google.
According to the sources, the fee was imposed on Thursday as a result of WhatsApp’s reluctance to delete information regarding the drug Lyrica, the sale and manufacture of which are illegal in Russia.
It is worth mentioning, however, that WhatsApp was previously punished for allegedly refusing to comply with Russia’s privacy regulations and retain users’ data on Russian servers.
According to the study, Moscow has been at odds with Big Tech for years over content, censorship, data, and local representation, in issues that erupted when Russia pushed its armed troops into Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
Meanwhile, in India, WhatsApp banned 7.4 million bad accounts in April alone, in accordance with the new IT guidelines for 2021.
The country’s most popular messaging app, which has roughly 500 million users, got another record 4,377 complaint complaints in April, with a total of 234 ‘actioned’ records.
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