TikTok has announced that users in Russia won't be able to livestream or publish new videos because of the "fake news" law passed by Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 4.
That law threatens anyone who publishes what the Russian government considers "false" information about the country's invasion of Ukraine with fines and up to 15 years in prison. Many outlets—including the BBC, CNN, and Bloomberg—suspended operations in Russia as a result. Others, such as The Washington Post, have removed bylines from reports filed in the country.
Now it seems traditional publishers aren't the only ones worried about this law. TikTok explains:
"We will continue to evaluate the evolving circumstances in Russia to determine when we might fully resume our services with safety as our top priority," TikTok says. But the company was probably about to draw ire from the Russian government even before it made this decision.
TikTok announced on March 4 that it would start to label content shared by state-controlled media, which it defines as "entities for which a government exercises direct or indirect control over their editorial content or decision-making," in response to the war in Ukraine. (And, of course, the Russian government's efforts to control the narrative via its state media.)
Russia hasn't taken kindly to other efforts to call out state media outlets. The country has restricted access to Facebook because it hasn't given Russian media carte blanche, and it reportedly demanded that YouTube remove its restrictions from channels associated with its state media outlets, too. Twitter also seems to have been blocked within the country.