Russian court fines Twitter $116,778 for failing to remove banned content

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<strong>As Twitter grapples with government scrutiny globally including in India over the presence of bad accounts, a Russian court has fined Twitter $116,778 for violating the country's Internet legislation by failing to remove banned content.</strong></p>
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Part of the content in question urged minors to take part in illegal protests, promoted drug use, and spread child pornography, reports Xinhua news agency.<br />
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Twitter has 60 days to pay the fine from the day the ruling comes into force.<br />
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According to Russia's TASS News Agency, Moscow's Tagansky District Court handed Twitter a total of 8.9 million rubles in fines ($116,778) for refusing to delete tweets urging minors to join an unauthorised and illegitimate event.<br />
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The court was set to consider three more protocols that the Russian media watchdog had filed against Facebook.<br />
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The consideration of three similar protocols against Google has been postponed to May 4.<br />
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Last month, Russia's telecom watchdog Roskomnadzor started to limit Twitter's traffic due to its failure to remove banned content, and warned about the possibility of completely blocking the micro-blogging site.<br />
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Twitter last month announced to establish a legal entity in Turkey to continue operating there under the country's internet law that came into place last year.<br />
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"We will continue to work to protect the public conversation in Turkey, empowering people to have access to that conversation, and advocating for our values," the micro-blogging platform added.<br />
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India has also raised similar demands from Twitter to keep its platform sanitised for meaningful conversations and remove bad accounts.<br />
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The Indian government in February announced new stringent guidelines for social media platforms along with code of ethics for over-the-top (OTT) platforms and digital media.<br />
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The social media platforms will be classified under two categories — social media intermediaries and significant social media intermediaries — with the latter being subject to greater obligations.<br />
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The new Intermediary Liability Rules ask social media companies with over 5 million users in India to not only enable traceability of end-to-end encrypted messages but also establish local offices with senior officials to deal with law enforcement and user grievances.<br />
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Intermediaries will have to appoint a Grievance Officer to deal with such complaints and share the name and contact details of such officer in India.<br />
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"Grievance Officer shall acknowledge the complaint within 24 hours and resolve it within 15 days from its receipt," said an official statement.</p>
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<em>(IANS)</em></p>