Today’s decision by Russia to ban Instagram doesn’t just block some 80 million users, but also cuts them off from the world outside Russia, as Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri pointed out in a tweet.
On Monday, Instagram will be blocked in Russia. This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as ~80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong.
— Adam Mosseri (@mosseri) March 11, 2022
The decision comes as retaliation against a change of platform policy by Meta, allowing Facebook and Instagram users in some countries to call for violence against Russian soldiers in Ukraine, as well as against Vladimir Putin and Belrusian President Alexander Lukashenko. Threats against Russian civilians remain banned.
YouTube remains as a social channel still operating in Russia, although it has paused all monetization programs for Russian users.
Read next: Let’s take a look at RU YouTube
Why we care. It’s surely the case that most companies and most marketers feel that this is not the best time to be engaging with Russian audiences. So the potential for Instagram campaigns in that part of the world is surely not going to be missed.
What we care about is yet another source of independent information being blocked. Not everything on Instagram may be accurate, but at least it’s not created by Russian state information sources.
About The Author
Kim Davis is the Editorial Director of MarTech. Born in London, but a New Yorker for over two decades, Kim started covering enterprise software ten years ago. His experience encompasses SaaS for the enterprise, digital- ad data-driven urban planning, and applications of SaaS, digital technology, and data in the marketing space. He first wrote about marketing technology as editor of Haymarket’s The Hub, a dedicated marketing tech website, which subsequently became a channel on the established direct marketing brand DMN. Kim joined DMN proper in 2016, as a senior editor, becoming Executive Editor, then Editor-in-Chief a position he held until January 2020. Prior to working in tech journalism, Kim was Associate Editor at a New York Times hyper-local news site, The Local: East Village, and has previously worked as an editor of an academic publication, and as a music journalist. He has written hundreds of New York restaurant reviews for a personal blog, and has been an occasional guest contributor to Eater.
