MOSCOW, March 26. /TASS/. Russia’s Internet watchdog (Roskomnadzor) has sent a demand to Twitter’s administration to remove false reports alleging that a curfew is introduced in Moscow, the agency’s press service said.
"Roskomnadzor received the demand of the Prosecutor General’s Office to take down the false information that the Russian Defense Minister had allegedly approved the order to introduce a curfew in Moscow shared on Twitter," the statement reads. "The social network’s administrators were sent a special notice by Roskomnadzor to remove the wrongful information."
The press service recalled that Facebook complied with the demand received on March 25, Wednesday, to delete false socially important information regarding the coronavirus statistics in Russia.
Earlier, Russian media outlets and Instagram also removed similar fakes.
The press service also told TASS that YouTube still hadn’t done the same in compliance with the official demand.
The watchdog earlier said it is braced to take strict measures including blocking and revoking licenses of mass media outlets for disseminating fakes about coronavirus in Russia.
Russia’s Investigative Committee informed that perpetrators can be fined up to 3 million rubles ($38,205) for spreading false reports about the scale of coronavirus spread in Russia.
Coronavirus pandemic
In late December 2019, Chinese authorities notified the World Health Organization (WHO) about the outbreak of a previously unknown pneumonia in the city of Wuhan, central China. Since then, cases of the novel coronavirus — named COVID-19 by the WHO — have been reported in more than 190 countries.
On March 11, the WHO declared the coronavirus outbreak a pandemic. As of now, over 457,000 people have been infected around the world and more than 21,000 have died. Russia identified 840 cases, while 38 people recovered and two people died.