A Moscow court has fined Twitter for refusing to remove data that breaches Russian law from its platform. The court's press service told Sputnik that the social network will be obliged to pay a fine of nearly $116,000 within sixty days in three cases related to failure to remove illegal information.
In total, the Russian media watchdog Roskomnadzor has filed three complaints against Twitter under the Administrative Offences Code over the platform's failure to delete information.
Roskomnadzor previously said in a news release that if the company refuses to restrict access to illegal information, it could face a fine of up to $52,000. The penalty could go up to a sum equaling a tenth of the enterprise's annual revenue if the company breaches the code once again.
Failure to remove extremist, drug-related, or child pornography content could entail bigger fines: up to $100,000 for the first minsdemeanour and a fifth of the company's annual revenue for another refusal.
On 10 March, Roskomnadzor slowed down the speed of Twitter in Russia on all mobile devices and half of stationary devices and threatened to block it if non-compliance with Russian laws persists. The authority sent over 28,000 initial and repeated requests to remove illegal links and publications, which were never fulfilled.
