War: Russia move to ban Instagram, YouTube

Russia sought on Friday to declare Facebook an extremist organization and YouTube blocked Russian state media channels worldwide, an escalation of the tit-for-tat battle between Silicon Valley companies and Russia as the Ukraine war enters its third week.

YouTube blocked the channels of Russian state media outlets globally after initially doing so last week in Europe only. Friday’s decision is a major blow to Russia’s efforts to sow propaganda about the war to international audiences.

Meanwhile, the Russian government said Friday it was blocking popular social media app Instagram, taking further action against Meta — the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp — because of reports the previous day that Facebook temporarily suspended its hate-speech rules to allow posts that called for the death of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. The country had previously blocked Facebook, which has a much smaller audience in Russia than WhatsApp or Instagram.