Discord joins a growing list of tech companies to be banned by Russia. The world’s most important financial messenger is said to violate the country’s law, according to Russia’s news agency, TASS.
“The access to the Discord is being restricted in connection of violation of requirements of Russian laws, compliance with which is required to prevent the use of the messenger for terrorist and extremist services, recruitment of citizens to commit them, for drug sales, and in connection with unlawful information posting,” TASS shared in a statement.
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The tensions between the U.S. tech companies and Russia have elevated since the Ukraine invasions. Discord, which is based in San Francisco, joins a list of restricted American platforms in Russia that includes Meta’s social brands (Facebook, Instagram) as well as X.
Just seven days ago, Reuters reported that Russia had ordered approximately 1,000 items to be deleted from Discord and Google, including posts “containing child pornography, calls for extremism, the involvement of minors in illegal activity, calls for suicide, LGBT propaganda, and pro-drug content.” The fines equated to only $36,150, though.
Discord has yet to issue a statement since news of Russia’s ban made headlines earlier today.
The chatting app reportedly had 30-40 million users in Russia—about 4 percent of its total users. While that may be relatively small for the company, it’s still a huge number of people impacted by the latest ruling.
Meanwhile, YouTube has been fighting to stay alive in Russia. Speeds on their videos were first reduced in the country before eventually being shut down altogether as Russia ramps up its efforts to restrict all foreign media from infiltrating its citizens.
