The Russian communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, expressed its willingness to dialogue with Twitter on Thursday, whose service was slowed down yesterday due to “systematic non-compliance” with this country’s legislation, the Russian entity reported today.
“We are ready to talk. We know all of our counterparts on Twitter and they know us, but at the moment we have not received a response to our repeated attempts to establish direct contact,” the deputy head of the Russian regulator, Vadim Subbotin, told the Interfax agency.
Subbotin denied that the sanction against the popular social network was related to the opposition protests in Russia, which erupted after the arrest and conviction last January of the opposition leader, Alexéi Navalni.
“None of our statements makes mention of the protests in Russia,” he said.
The official insisted that Russia’s demands are related to the need to remove “dangerous social content”, in particular, “incitement of minors to suicide.”
“They have openly ignored our requests to remove appeals directed at children on Twitter,” he said.
According to the regulator, Twitter has been sent in the past more than 28,000 complaints, many of them repeated, to remove posts and links prohibited by Russian law.
Roskomnadzor announced yesterday that the slowdown of the Twitter service concerns the publication of photos and videos, and not text messages, and that this will continue if the prohibited content is not removed.