Russia’s Instagram ban affects more than simply ordinary individuals who no longer have access to a major social media site to express themselves. It appears to be affecting influencers now.
News.com.au reports that some influencers in the country are claiming that the recent Instagram ban has “taken away” their lives. Among these social media influencers is Olga Buzova, a reality TV star who has 23.2 million followers on her account.
Buzova posted a seven-minute video on her profile wherein she sobbed over the apparent loss of her audience in her home country. She speaks in Russian, but a few of her most important words have been translated.
Basically, she said that she was “not afraid” of admitting that she doesn’t want to lose her followers. She also claimed that through her profile, she was baring her life, work, and soul, doing it “not as a job” but as a part of her overall being.
Another influencer, who seems to be unnamed at the time of this writing, posted her own video sharing how the Instagram ban has affected her life. What looks to be an excerpt from a long video was shared on Twitter by NEXTA, a media outlet based in Belarus (via GlobalNews):
https://twitter.com/nexta_tv/status/1502433817465864198?s=20&t=AD2Fj3trjGB7EHhYj_5AaQ
This video, on the other hand, did not appear to be as well-received as the aforementioned influencer would have hoped. As shown in NEXTA’s post, the woman was chastised for allegedly “not caring” about the deaths of thousands of people as a result of the conflict, with her “greatest worry” being the “inability to upload images of food from restaurants.”
Nonetheless, the ban on Instagram in Russia is the country’s most dramatic measure in the aftermath of the Ukrainian military crisis, following a slew of economic and technology penalties imposed by the West.
What’s The Reason Behind Russia’s Instagram Ban?
In a report by the BBC, Russia’s Roskomnadzor (the state media watchdog) stated that the reason for banning the social media platform is to prevent alleged “calls to violence” against the country’s soldiers.
This statement was made after Meta, Instagram’s parent company, recently mentioned that they’re allowing posts calling for violence against so-called “Russian invaders” on their platforms (including IG and Facebook), according to a report by CBS News.
According to the original BBC article, these posts will be allowed on Meta’s platforms despite most of them violating their Community Guidelines. However, some commentators, such as BBC’s Olga Robinson, believe that the Instagram ban has been “a long time coming.” According to her, the country had long debated whether to restrict social media services on their own turf, even before the Ukraine conflict.
Furthermore, Russia seems to strongly condemn the western tech giant for its alleged “extremist activities” in this tweet from the country’s embassy in the United States:
☝️We demand that 🇺🇸 authorities stop the extremist activities of @Meta, take measures to bring the perpetrators to justice. Users of #Facebook & #Instagram did not give the owners of these platforms the right to determine the criteria of truth and pit nations against each other. https://t.co/1RkrjRmEtA pic.twitter.com/sTacSm4nDt
— Russian Embassy in USA 🇷🇺 (@RusEmbUSA) March 11, 2022
For now, it remains to be seen whether the Instagram ban will last for as long as the crisis remains.