Discord Services Restricted in Russia For Not Meeting Content Law Requirements

Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, has blocked the Discord instant messaging platform, citing the company’s failure to comply with requirements to prevent the service from being used for terrorist and extremist services, recruitment of citizens for such activities, drug sales, and unlawful information posting.

According to a statement from the regulator, Discord has been included in the register of social networks, which obliged it to independently identify and block content that violated the law.

The company was fined 3.5 million rubles ($36,150) for its failure to comply.

The regulator added that the decision to block Discord was connected with the San Francisco-based company’s “systematic” failure to comply with Russian content law requirements.

The move comes just a week after Roskomnadzor threatened to block Discord in Russia if it didn’t remove nearly 1,000 posts containing “illegal” content, which the regulator said was linked to drug sales and contained information about the production of controlled substances and narcotic drugs.

Discord has yet to publicly respond to the block.

Russia has in recent years clamped down on content it deems illegal on foreign tech platforms that operate in the country.

In February 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, Moscow blocked Twitter — now rebranded as X — as well as Meta Platforms’ Facebook and Instagram.

Telegram, the messaging app founded by Russian entrepreneur Pavel Durov, has for the most part cooperated with Russia’s demands, blocking channels that the government says violate the law.

Most recently, Russia’s antimonopoly watchdog asked Google to crack down on content violating Russian laws on the Google Play Store.