Russian court fines TikTok 3 mln rubles for not removing banned content

MOSCOW. Oct 4 (Interfax) - The magistrates' court of Moscow's Tagansky District ordered on Tuesday to fine TikTok 3 million rubles for not removing banned content propagating LGBT among minors.

"TikTok Pte.Ltd shall be found culpable for an administrative offense and fined three million rubles," the judge said in handing down the ruling.

A TikTok representative insisted at the hearings that the proceedings be closed.

As reported earlier, a report on TikTok was compiled "based on three resolutions by the Federal Agency for Youth Affairs for propaganda of non-traditional sexual values, videos featuring LGBT, feminism, and distorted representation of traditional sexual values."

The key Internet services, i.e. Google, Telegram, Facebook (information resource of an entity banned in Russia), Twitter and TikTok, have been repeatedly fined since the beginning of 2021 over their failure to remove content prohibited in Russia. The overall fines imposed on all these foreign companies have exceeded 200 million rubles.

The companies Meta (branded as extremist and banned in Russia) and Google have also been subjected to turnover-based fines for repeated violations of Russian laws in the amount of 5% of their 2020 revenue. In particular, courts ruled to recover almost 2 billion rubles in turnover-based fines from Meta and over 28.9 billion rubles from Google.