Russia moves to categorize Facebook's parent company Meta as an 'extremist organization'

Russian authorities have called for Facebook's parent company Meta to be categorized as an "extremist organization," according to an Interfax report.

Earlier this month, Russia reportedly banned access to Facebook. Now, Russia's prosecutor general's office is attempting to label Facebook's parent company as an "extremist organization."

Last week, Facebook temporarily allowed users to post threats to Vladimir Putin and the Russian military forces involved in the invasion of Ukraine.

Now, Russia has declared the parent company of Facebook to be an "extremist organization," while also restricting access to the Instagram application.

Russian communications regulator Roskomnadzor claimed, "Messages shared on Instagram encourage and provoke violent actions toward Russians."

On Monday, Instagram head Adam Mosseri responded to the social media block: "This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as ~80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong."

Meanwhile, Facebook has enabled users to temporarily express violent posts calling for the death of Vladimir Putin and Russian military forces.

Meta President of Global Affairs Nick Clegg said, "Our policies are focused on protecting people's rights to speech as an expression of self-defense in reaction to a military invasion of their country. The fact is, if we applied our standard content policies without any adjustments we would now be removing content from ordinary Ukrainians expressing their resistance and fury at the invading military forces, which would rightly be viewed as unacceptable."

"We have no quarrel with the Russian people a d will not tolerate Russophobia or any kind of discrimination, harassment or violence towards Russians on our platform," Clegg added.

Meanwhile, Russia has made a crackdown on anti-war demonstrations and reportedly arrested nearly 800 people in 37 Russian cities.