Facebook and Twitter sued by regulators for refusing data on servers in Russia

Russia’s media regulator formally initiated administrative lawsuits against Facebook and Twitter and demanded that user data be placed in Russia.

The regulator had previously asked Facebook and Twitter to store Russian user data on servers located in Russia under the supervision of the Russian regulatory telecommunications department.

But Facebook and Twitter directly rejected the proposal and did not transfer any user data, so the Russian regulatory authorities decided to initiate an administrative lawsuit against Facebook and Twitter. The previously passed law requires Internet service providers to store user data in Russia on servers in Russia.

According to the country’s law, if an Internet company violates the law, the supervisory authority has the right to sue for administrative crime and fine it accordingly.

Among them, the fine is about 1 million to 6 million rubles (about $16,000 to $94,000). For Facebook and Twitter, this fine does not need to be concerned.

However, the law also provides that if an enterprise is found to be in violation of the administrative law and still fails to make corrections, the supervisory authority has the right to block the corresponding Internet services.

In other words, if Facebook and Twitter lose the lawsuit and the data is not placed in Russia, they may be put on a blacklist by the regulatory agency to prevent access.

Via: ZDNet