Fines imposed on social networks in Russia 2021, by company

Russia imposed total fines of 43 million Russian rubles on Facebook in the first six months of 2021, which was more than on any other social network. Twitter was fined with the second-highest amount of nearly 28 million Russian rubles. Google received fines of nearly 10 million Russian rubles due to the unlawful actions of YouTube. The fines were mostly related to the failure of social media platforms to remove content prohibited on the Russian internet, such as posts encouraging minors to go to protests or promoting suicide and child pornography.

Internet monitoring in Russia

The activity of social networks is monitored in Russia by the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor). In April 2021, the agency stated it could block Twitter in case the unlawful content is not deleted; the decision was later reversed, allegedly after the social network's cooperation. In June 2020, Roskomnadzor lifted a ban on the messenger app Telegram, which was imposed in 2018 after the company refused to share encrypted conversations with authorities. The social network LinkedIn was blocked in 2016 for not storing personal data in the country.