Russian NGO Plans To Push Parliament To Make Facebook Register As Legal Entity In Russia

Russia's non-governmental organization the Foundation for the Protection of National Values said on Monday that it would ask the national parliament's lower house to draft a bill to oblige Facebook and other foreign social media to register as a legal entity in the country

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 12th November, 2019) Russia's non-governmental organization the Foundation for the Protection of National Values said on Monday that it would ask the national parliament's lower house to draft a bill to oblige Facebook and other foreign social media to register as a legal entity in the country.

According to the foundation, Facebook has been boosting its practice of groundlessly blocking the content that is deemed as unfavorable by "certain circles of the US establishment." Among those who fall victims to this "unilateral censorship," the NGO went on, are users from many countries, including from Saudi Araba, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan and Russia.

The foundation recalled that only over the last couple of months, Facebook had removed Russia-linked pages engaged in the alleged interference in Africa's affairs; blocked and unblocked RT and Sputnik chief editor Margarita Simonyan's account, as well as Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency's English-language Arctic.ru page.

"The Foundation for the Protection of National Values intends to appeal to the State Duma to start drafting a bill that will oblige Facebook and other foreign social media to register as legal entities in Russia.

Only in this case, Russia will have an effective tool to protect the rights of its citizens from the arbitrariness of the leadership of Western social networks," the NGO said.

In an interview with Sputnik, the NGO head, Alexander Malkevich, said that he had set off for France to attend the second Paris Peace Forum where he planned to discuss political censorship in social media.

A little later, Malkevich says, he plans to present a report that will collect all the "crimes of Facebook."

"They block one user, then another, then they unblock someone, and the discussion fades away. If we collect all these cases and present them in a single document, at least concerning cases over the past year, it will be something significant," he said.

On his Telegram, Malkevich argued that Facebook filtered content applying strict political censorship, hiding behind "obscure" community rules. According to him, Facebook is "no longer a platform for freedom of expression."