Meta Plans to Ban the Russian TV Network RT From Its Apps

Meta on Monday said that it plans to bar Russian media outlets including RT, the state-owned television network that has come under scrutiny in the United States, from posting to its platforms, saying the outlets had carried out covert influence campaigns across social media sites to manipulate discourse online.

Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, said the ban would take place in the coming days. The move escalates actions against Russian state media actors that U.S. intelligence officials have said run disinformation operations across the world’s largest social networks.

“After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets: Rossiya Segodnya, RT and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity,” Meta said in a statement.

U.S. authorities have recently cracked down on RT for trying to interfere in the presidential election in November. On Friday, the United States — along with Canada and Britain — accused RT of acting as an arm of Russia’s intelligence agencies and announced new sanctions meant to cut off international financing for disinformation operations around the world.

That followed the federal indictment of two RT employees for funneling at least $9.7 million to bankroll American podcasters on Tenet Media, a video-streaming site in Tennessee, in hopes of pushing the Kremlin’s propaganda and undermining the American democratic political process.

“We’re exposing how Russia deploys similar tactics around the world,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Friday. “Russian weaponization of disinformation to subvert and polarize free and open societies extends to every part of the world.”