Meta announced on Monday evening that it will ban Russian state media outlets from using its apps worldwide due to “foreign interference activities.”
The ban comes after the US accused RT and employees of the state-run outlet of funneling $10 million through shell entities to covertly fund influencer campaigns on social media channels including TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube, according to an unsealed indictment.
“After careful consideration, we are expanding our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media,” Meta said in response to a AFP consultation.
“Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” said Meta, whose apps include Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Threads.
RT was forced to cease formal operations in Britain, Canada, the European Union and the United States due to sanctions after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, according to the indictment unsealed in New York.
US prosecutors have quoted an RT editor-in-chief as saying he created “a whole empire of covert projects” designed to shape public opinion among “Western audiences.”
Secret Content Backup
One of the undercover projects involved financing and operating an online content creation company in Tennessee, according to the indictment.
Since its launch in late 2023, the Russian-backed U.S. content creation operation has published nearly 2,000 videos that have racked up more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, according to the indictment.
Prosecutors cited one content producer complaining that the company pressured him to post a video earlier this year of a “well-known American political commentator visiting a grocery store in Russia,” complaining that it looked like “overt marketing” but agreeing to post the video.
The company never disclosed to viewers that it was funded by RT, US prosecutors said.
“RT has conducted malign influence campaigns in countries opposed to its policies, including the United States, in an effort to sow internal divisions and thereby weaken opposition to the Russian government's goals,” prosecutors argued in the indictment.
Proxies and mercenaries
Russia is the largest source of covert influence operations disrupted by Meta on its platform since 2017, and such deceptive online influence efforts increased following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, according to threat reports routinely published by the social media giant.
Meta had previously banned the Federal News Agency in Russia to thwart foreign interference activities by the Russian Internet Research Agency.
RT's capabilities were expanded early last year, with the Russian government enhancing them with “cyber operational capabilities and ties to Russian intelligence,” the U.S. State Department said in a recent statement.
Cyber capabilities were primarily focused on influence and intelligence operations around the world, according to the State Department.
Information gathered through RT's covert operations flows to Russian intelligence services, Russian media outlets, Russian mercenary groups and other “proxy arms” of the Russian government, the United States said.
The State Department said it was making diplomatic efforts to inform governments around the world about Russia's use of RT for covert activities and encourage them to take steps to limit “Russia's ability to interfere in foreign elections and acquire weapons for its war against Ukraine.”
