Russia fines Twitter for not removing calls to protests
A Russian court on Friday fined Twitter nearly €99,000 for failing to remove calls to opposition protests, as Moscow ramps up pressure against the US tech giant. Authorities in January accused foreign social media platforms of interfering in Russia's domestic affairs by not deleting calls to rallies in support of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny late that month and early February. Last month, Russia's media watchdog Roskomnadzor said it would draw up protocols demanding foreign social media platforms such as Twitter be fined for failing to delete the calls after it had warned them to do so. In a statement, Roskomnadzor described the calls to protests as "inciting teenagers" to take part in "illegal activities", or "unauthorised mass events". On Friday, the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited a Moscow court as saying it had hit Twitter with three fines totalling 8.9 million rubles (€99,000) for failing to remove information that violates Russian law. Twitter declined to comment when reached by AFP. The fines come after Roskomnadzor last month began slowing Twitter's service speeds, saying that the company had failed to comply with its requests to delete content related...