The knuckleheads blocked the messenger Viber.
Roskomnadzor reported about the restriction of access to the messenger Viber on the territory of Russia due to “non-compliance with legal requirements”. “Access to the Viber service is restricted due to violation of the requirements of the Russian legislation to organizers of information distribution,” the agency specified.
Roskomnadzor explained that it is about preventing threats related to “terrorist and extremist” activities, recruitment of citizens, distribution of drugs, as well as placement of other prohibited information.
Rakuten Viber Messenger was developed in 2010 by Israeli entrepreneurs Igor Magazinnik and Talmon Marko. The service is owned by Viber Media, a company registered in Luxembourg, where it is headquartered. In January 2022, in accordance with the Russian “landing” law, Viber opened a representative office in Russia.
In the summer of 2023, a Moscow court fined Viber 1 million rubles for failure to remove “fakes” about the Russian army. Representatives of the company during the hearing said that the disputed information was posted in Ukrainian, but it was still removed from searches in the Russian Federation. At the same time, Viber emphasized the lack of technical ability to remove entire communities.
March 13, Tagansky Court of Moscow again fined Viber for failure to remove banned content, assigning the company a fine of 800 thousand rubles.