Russia is launching a replacement for Instagram
A new Russian social network, Rossgram, will be launched in Russia on March 28, according to the project’s official website. It specified that from Monday the social network will be available for partners – media, sponsors, investors, and then expand its work for bloggers and regular users.
The description says that Rossgram will provide “all the opportunities for communication, business, blogging, publishing news or creating your own project”, the application will run on iOS and Android.
According to reports, the author of Rossgram is Internet marketer Alexander Zubov, who calls himself a classmate of the author of Telegram Pavel Durov. The rapid launch of a new social network announced on March 14, when Russian authorities blocked Instagram.
In March, a Tver court in Moscow recognized Meta as an extremist organization at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, blocking its Facebook and Instagram social networks. According to the motivating part of the court decision, Meta violates the rights of Russians and threatens the constitutional order of the Russian Federation.
However, the use of Facebook and Instagram by Russian citizens is not an offense, despite the recognition of their owner as an extremist organization. Recognition of Meta as extremist does not apply to WhatsApp messenger, which also is its.
Human rights activist Pavlo Chikov writes that the decision to declare Meta extremist made because:
– in 2016, Nazi symbols and an annotation of Adolf Hitler’s book “My Struggle” were posted on Instagram;
– In 2020, an Islamist video and “pictures of a nationalist orientation containing a fascist swastika and slogans” were published on Facebook.
In addition, according to the Russian authorities, Meta violates international documents in the field of protection of rights and discriminates against Russian state media, including Zvezda, Gazeta.Ru, Lenta.Ru, RT and Sputnik, the decision said court.
The reason for the lawsuit of the Russian Prosecutor General’s Office against Meta was a change in Facebook’s policy, which allowed users in Ukraine to call for violence against Russians in the context of the large-scale war that Moscow launched on February 24 against Ukraine.
