The Tagansky Court in the Russian capital, Moscow, ruled to fine the company TikTok Pte. Ltd an amount of three million rubles, due to its failure to delete prohibited content dealing with “non-traditional” sexual relations and issues of sexual harassment of children.
The social network and its subsidiary have been charged under the second clause of Article 13.41 of the Administrative Offenses Code of the Russian Federation.
During the course of the trial, the judge announced: “It was decided to convict TikTok Pte. Ltd, and sentence it to an administrative penalty consisting of a fine of 3 million rubles.”
According to the details of the case, the reason for issuing the violation is due to the company and its social network not complying with Russian laws related to publishing content on the Internet, and not removing prohibited information that promotes “non-traditional” sexual relations (as the gay movement is considered extremist and banned in Russia), as well as not removing content related to sexual harassment of children.
In a related context, TikTok’s defense lawyer explained during the session that “the Russian Federal Authority for Supervision of Communications and Information Technology (Roskomnadzor) violated the protocol in issuing the violation, and it did not send notices to the hosting service provider whose instructions the company follows, stating that the information in question is prohibited information,” and stressed that “TikTok adheres to Russian law and removes prohibited content at the request of government agencies and users.” (Russia Today)
