Russian officials are no longer threatening to cut off the country’s access to Twitter after the social network ramped up its efforts to purge content banned by that nation.
Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications watchdog, backed down on the threat Monday but said it would continue throttling the speed of Twitter’s website over an alleged proliferation of illegal posts.
The agency started slowing down Twitter’s web traffic on March 10 and said it could block the social network entirely if the company did not remove the prohibited materials, including “child pornography, pro-narcotic and suicidal content.”
Roskomnadzor said it decided to give Twitter more time to address the issue after the Silicon Valley giant started removing the offending posts more quickly. But the speed restrictions will stay in place until May 15, according to the agency.
Twitter is now taking down banned content 81 hours after it appears on average, far longer than the 24-hour response time Russian law requires, officials said.
The announcement followed an April 1 video conference between Roskomnadzor and Twitter officials about the company’s response to Russia’s concerns and the conditions under which the speed throttling would end, according to Russian officials.
“It was a productive discussion about how we can both work to ensure that reports of such illegal content are dealt with expeditiously,” Twitter said in a statement.
Category: Technology
Source: New York Post
