A court in St. Petersburg fined VKontakte 1.5 million rubles for refusing to delete posts about the January rallies

The magistrate of court district No. 7 in St. Petersburg fined the VKontakte administration one and a half million rubles for failing to remove posts about the January protests in support of politician Alexei Navalny. This was reported by the joint press service of the city courts.

A protocol was drawn up against the administration of the social network regarding the refusal to remove content, access to which is subject to restriction in accordance with the law (Part 2 of Article 13.41 of the Administrative Code). In total, Roskomnadzor demanded that VKontakte LLC limit access to information located at eight addresses, but the content was not deleted within 24 hours from the moment the notification was received.

The VKontakte press service told Mediazona that we are talking about YouTube videos, links to which users of the social network have embedded in their posts.

“We do not agree with this decision and plan to appeal it. The verdict once again demonstrates law enforcement practice in holding social networks accountable and indicates tightening regulation of the Internet,” the press release said.

Previously, Vkontakte was fined one and a half million rubles under the same article, Twitter - 8.9 million rubles, and Mail.ru Group - four million rubles under two protocols. The administration of social networks refused to delete posts about the January protests.

On May 5, Roskomnadzor sent another 16 protocols to the court due to the refusal of Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Google to remove “prohibited information.”

Updated 14:15 : official comment from the VKontakte press service has been added.