Google on Saturday became the latest US tech giant to prevent Russian state media from earning money on its platforms in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
It follows similar moves by its YouTube subsidiary and Facebook.
“In response to the war in Ukraine, we are pausing Google monetization of Russian state-funded media across our platforms,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.
Google already had restricted news companies funded by the Russian government from advertising tools and some features on YouTube.
RT Deputy Editor-in-Chief Anna Belkina said in a statement on Tuesday that technology companies that have cut her outlet’s distribution have not pointed to “a single grain of evidence that what RT has reported over these days, and continues to report, is not true.”
“This collective ‘establishment’ seems to be terrified of a mere presence of any outside voice for the fear of losing their historically captive audience if that audience encounters a different perspective,” the statement said.
Google had previously banned the RT News app in Ukraine at the request of the government in Kyiv.
We’ve reached out to the company for more details on the Play Store ban and will update this report as we get more.
Google has also appeared a little slower to react to the Ukraine crisis compared to some other platforms.
Yesterday Apple confirmed it will remove the RT and Sputnik News apps from its iOS App Store in all markets outside Russia itself, as it responded to the invasion of Ukraine.
Microsoft, meanwhile, had also already banned RT from its Windows app store and de-ranked both news sources in its search engine Bing — announcing a package of measures Monday.
Other tech firms have also scrambled to put out restrictions on Russian state-affiliated media in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine, with Twitter expanding its labeling policy to flag tweets that contain links to the media outlets’ content earlier this week, as well as reducing the visibility of the content itself.
Twitter has faced some criticism from European leaders for not blocking the accounts themselves. But the company told Reuters yesterday that it will comply with the EU’s sanction when it comes into effect, adding: “The European Union sanctions will likely legally require us to withhold certain content in EU member states.”
However, other shutdowns or outages have been aimed at anyone living in Russia. Payment cards issued by several Russian banks (VTB Group, Sovcombank, Novikombank, Promsvyazbank, and Otkritie) are no longer accessible through Apple Pay and Google Pay due to international sanctions.
VTB Group reportedly manages the contactless cards for Moscow’s metros, buses, and trams, which is likely the reason for reported disruptions in Russia’s public transport. Apple also stopped all hardware sales in Russia on Tuesday.
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