Russia Threatens to Block Facebook Unless it Stores Data Locally. Russians may not be able to make use of Facebook again next year. The country is threatening to close the social network if it does not save the data of Russian users locally in the country.
According to Bloomberg, Alexander Zharov, the head of the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor, said that.
In 2014, President Vladimir Putin signed a law in which Internet companies operating in Russia have to store data from Russian users on local servers in the country.
By 2015, Google already moved servers to a Russian data center, and Twitter is also busy storing all data from Russian users locally in the country. The transfer must be completed by mid-2018, Roskomnadzor reported earlier.
“The law applies to everyone,” says Zharov about Facebook, who claims that Russia would be less dependent on foreign technology companies.
A similar situation is also seen in China, where local businesses take over Google, Twitter, and Facebook. A spokeswoman for Facebook does not want to respond to the statements made by the Roskomnadzor head.
The number of Russian Facebook users is estimated at around 23 million by research agency Statista. VKontakte, the Russian version of Facebook, is much larger with 97 million users.
LinkedIn
In November last year, Russia blocked all access to LinkedIn, when the social network refused to store the data of Russian users in the country. Till today’s date, the website is still unavailable in the country.