Russia's Instagram Ban Is Freaking Out Influencers

Russia's Instagram ban is not just affecting ordinary people who are now without a major social media platform to air their thoughts on. Now, it's seemingly affecting influencers.

(Photo : Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)
This picture taken in Moscow on October 5, 2021 shows the US social network Instagram logo on a smartphone screen. - Major social media services including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were hit by a massive outage on October 4, 2021, tracking sites showed, impacting potentially tens of millions of users.

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):

This video, however, didn't seem to be as well-received as the aforementioned influencer would've liked. As you can see in NEXTA's post, they criticized the woman for apparently "not caring" about the deaths of thousands of people as a result of the conflict, with her "biggest worry" being the "inability to post pictures of food from restaurants."

Nevertheless, the banning of Instagram in Russia is the latest major move by the country in the wake of the military crisis in Ukraine, after being handed numerous economic and technological sanctions by the west.

Read Also: New Anti-Russia Censorship Website Can Help Ordinary Russian Citizens! Here's How Squad303 Works

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.

(Photo : Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)
A photo of the META logo during the US social network Instagram opening on a tablet screen in Moscow on November 11, 2021. - Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg announced the parent company's name is being changed to "Meta" to represent a future beyond just its troubled social network. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP)

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.

These posts, as per the original BBC report, will be allowed on Meta's platforms despite being mostly against their Community Guidelines. But some analysts, like BBC's Olga Robinson, say that the Instagram ban on its own has been "a long time coming." According to her, the country has long mulled on whether to ban the social media platforms on their home soil even way before the Ukraine crisis happened.

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:

For now, it remains to be seen whether the Instagram ban will last for as long as the crisis remains.

Related Article: Google Play and YouTube Users in Russia Can No Longer Purchase Apps and Games

This article is owned by Tech Times

Written by RJ Pierce