Facebook could be banned in Russia if the social network does not follow the rules of local legislation regarding the storage of personal data. Alexander Zharov, head of the Federal Service for the Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Media (Roskomnadzor), said that if Facebook wants to continue operating in the country, it will have to comply with government laws, as "the law is binding on everyone".
Companies operating in Russia must follow Russian legislation that determines the storage of users' or customers' personal data on local servers in the country. However, the measure is not very satisfactory for some foreign companies and even for some local companies, as the intention of many is to carry out storage in the cloud, thus reducing costs and ensuring greater data security.
Since September 2015, the law has come into effect in the country, when several companies announced the transfer of Russian users' data, then collecting them on servers in the country, among the companies are AliExpress, Apple, Alibaba, ebay , Google, Uber, Twitter and Booking.com.
A year after the law went into effect, LinkedIn was suspended for failing to comply with the court order twice. Roskomnadzor has a history of blocking services that did not comply with the country's law. On the possibility of Facebook being banned, the presidential adviser on matters involving technology pointed out that Roskomnadzor does not yet have concrete plans to ban the social network from Russia.
