TikTok Bans Russian State Media Outlets RT And Sputnik For Acts Of 'Covert Influence Operations'

TikTok, a popular video app, has kicked off accounts belonging to Russian state-owned media outlets RT and Sputnik. They said these accounts were trying to secretly influence people, which is against their rules. This means that users can no longer see content from these Russian news organisations on TikTok.

In its official announcement on its website, TikTok has said that it is "removing accounts associated with Rossiya Segodnya and TV-Novosti for engaging in covert influence operations on TikTok, which violates our Community Guidelines. Previously, these accounts were restricted in the EU and UK."

TV-Novosti and Rossiya Segodnya are the parent organisations of the RT television network and the Russian news agency Sputnik.

"Globally, under our state-affiliated media policy, their content was also ineligible for the For You feed to limit attempts to influence foreign audiences on topics of global events and affairs, and their accounts were labelled as state-controlled media to provide important context about the source of the content. The removed accounts will be reported in our September Covert Influence Operations report," the statement mentioned.

This is not the first time when the RT and other Russian media outlets have been banned from any social media platforms. A few days ago, social media giant Meta, the company that owns and operates Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Whatsapp, announced on September 16 that it is banning Russian media outlet RT, days after the Biden administration accused RT of acting as an arm of Moscow's spy agencies.

"After careful consideration, we expanded our ongoing enforcement against Russian state media outlets. Rossiya Segodnya, RT, and other related entities are now banned from our apps globally for foreign interference activity," a Meta spokesperson said in a statement.