Russia slaps Google and Meta with massive fines
- The US tech giants were slapped with US$100 million and US$27 million penalties, respectively, for not deleting content banned by local law
- Friday’s rulings marked the first time the size of the fine was calculated based on revenue
A Moscow court on Friday slapped Google with a nearly US$100 million fine and also fined Facebook’s parent company Meta US$27 million over their failure to delete content banned by local law, as Russia seeks to step up pressure on technology giants.
The Tagansky District Court ruled that Google repeatedly neglected to remove the banned content, and ordered the company to pay an administrative fine of about 7.2 billion roubles (about US$98.4 million).
Google said it would study the court documents before deciding on its next steps.
Later Friday, the court also slapped a fine of nearly 2 billion roubles (US$27.2 million) on Meta for failure to remove banned content.
Russian courts had previously imposed smaller fines on Google, Facebook and Twitter this year, and Friday’s rulings marked the first time the size of the fine was calculated based on revenue.
Russian state communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said Google and Meta were specifically accused of violating the ban on distributing content that promotes extremist ideology, insults religious beliefs and encourages dangerous behaviour by minors, among other things.