Meta is banning Russian outlets including RT just weeks ahead of the US election

Meta is banning Russian media outlets from its apps, ahead of the US election. 

Meta is banning RT, Rossiya Segodnya, and other Russian state media networks from its platforms, claiming the outlets had used deceptive tactics to carry out interference activity.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets,” a Meta spokesperson told B-17 in a written statement, adding: “Rossiya Segodnya, RT, and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity.”

Meta owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.

The ban is expected to come into force across all apps over the coming days.

Meta’s decision comes as Russian media faces increased scrutiny from the Biden administration.

On Friday, the Biden administration hit Russian state media outlets with new sanctions, accusing RT of acting as an arm of Moscow’s spy agencies by engaging in covert information warfare operations around the world.

James Rubin, the coordinator for the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, called RT “a fully-fledged member of the intelligence apparatus and operation of the Russian government” for the Ukraine war, per NBC News.

Representatives for Rossiya Segodnya did not immediately respond to a request for comment from B-17, sent outside normal working hours.

Russian media entities have long faced accusations of attempting to influence Western politics. Russia’s war in Ukraine has also provided a new avenue for Russian disinformation to flourish in the US on the far right.

Earlier this month, the Department of Justice charged two RT employees with money laundering and reportedly paying $10 million to an unnamed Tennessee-based company to produce English-language social media videos aimed at stirring up political divisions.

“The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time.

Meanwhile, an unnamed US intelligence official told Reuters that RT was trying to sway voters toward former President Donald Trump ahead of the November election by using Western influencers.

Meta, along with YouTube and TikTok, has already banned some Russian state media, including RT, in the EU, following requests from national governments after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

“It’s cute how there’s a competition in the West — who can try to spank RT the hardest, in order to make themselves look better,” an RT spokesperson said in a statement sent to B-17. “META/Facebook already blocked RT in Europe two years ago, now they’re censoring information flow to the rest of the world.”

Meta has previously said that Russia is the top source of misinformation efforts in the world.

In a security report released last month, the company said Russian influence operations had leveraged generative AI to create personas for fake journalists and publish stories on fictitious news sites using distorted information from authentic articles.