Facebook owner Meta said late Monday that it would ban Russian state media outlets from its apps due to "foreign interference activity."
The ban comes after the United States accused the Kremlin-funded RT news network and employees of funneling $10 million through shell companies to covertly fund influence campaigns on social media platforms including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube.
"After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," Meta said in a statement sent to AFP.
Enforcement of the ban would roll out over the coming days. Besides Facebook, Meta's apps include Instagram, the WhatsApp messenger and Threads.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Tuesday slammed the decision as "unacceptable," adding that "with this action, Meta discredits itself."
RT was forced to cease operations in Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States as a result of sanctions imposed on Russia over its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, according to a U.S. indictment.
Meta previously banned the Federal News Agency in Russia to thwart foreign interference activities by the Russian Internet Research Agency, linked to the late Wagner Group founder Yevgeny Prigozhin.
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