What Happened
Russia said it will move to fine Facebook 5-10% of its annual turnover in the country for repeatedly ignoring requests to remove banned content, using for the first time a law passed in December 2020 that allows regulators to sanction companies based on their turnover in Russia, Reuters reported Oct. 5.

Why It Matters
This is the largest fine Russia has levied against Facebook, which shows Moscow’s increasing willingness to penalize U.S. tech giants as part of its campaign to coerce them into compliance with Russian law. While Facebook’s willingness to pay this new fine is unclear, the timing of the penalty is notable, since it comes as the social media company faces widespread backlash amid the ongoing whistleblower scandal and recent global outage of its services. Moscow may have chosen to target Facebook at this time to try and pressure the company into deleting content rather than simply paying the fine.

Background
Business daily Vedomosti estimated Facebook's annual turnover in Russia is between 12 and 39 billion roubles ($165-$538 million), meaning the fine would be between approximately $8 and 54 million — several times larger than the over 20 Russian cases filed against Facebook this year, which together totaled fines of only around 70 million rubles ($1 million). Russia’s internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, sent a protocol laying out Facebook’s numerous violations of Russian law to a Russian court, which will decide the exact amount of the fine.