Meta’s head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, said in a statement on Twitter: “Yesterday, Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact-checking and labelling of content posted to Facebook by four Russian state-owned media organizations. We refused. As a result, they have announced they will be restricting the use of our services.”
Meta, which has long been under pressure to combat misinformation, partners with outside fact-checkers, including Reuters, which assess some content for veracity. Meta says that content rated false, altered or partly false is shown to fewer users.
Clegg said “ordinary Russians” were using Meta’s apps — which include Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, as well as Facebook — to “express themselves and organize for action” and that the company wanted them to continue to do so.
