After a court ruled the website guilty of violating a data storage law, Russia's communications regulator has announced that access to LinkedIn is blocked in the country.
LinkedIn Blocked In Russia
According to The Washington Post, the U.S.-based social network for business professionals LinkedIn is blocked in Russia. On Thursday, Nov. 17, Roskomnadzor, Russia's communications authority, told Interfax news agency that LinkedIn website would be blocked within 24 hours. According to media reports, a number of Internet service providers in Russia appeared to have immediately begun blocking the website.
The block of LinkedIn led to surprise from some quarters, since the website is a widely-used social network not known for political activity. There are also some major concerns that a newly restrictive environment on the Russian Internet has been marked by the move against LinkedIn.
Russian Social Networks Regulation
President Vladimir Putin put in place a law in 2014 that came into force this year. The law is now the base for targeting LinkedIn. The law that requires social networks with Russian users to store six months of data on Russian land was drawn up after social media was used to help organize widespread protests in Russia.
Activists said that the law would give the Russian government a pretext to block social networks in order to shut protests down, while Putin and other Russian officials said the move was designed with privacy concerns in mind. Internet expert and blogger Anton Nossik told Reuters in 2014 that the aim of this law is to create a quasi-legal pretext to close social media services such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and all others.
According to Tech Crunch, the ban comes after LinkedIn tried to meet with Russian regulators on Friday, November 11, in an attempt to avoid the situation. In a statement issued in response, LinkedIn said that the Russian court's decision has the potential to affect grow of the companies that use LinkedIn for their businesses and to deny access to the social media network for the millions of members in Russia.
