Students in Novosibirsk say university banned them from running extremist Instagram

Students at the Siberian State University of Water Transport said the university authorities had issued an order prohibiting them and their teachers from using the social networks Instagram and Facebook, owned by Meta, a company that a Russian court recognized as an extremist organization and banned its activities.

As told post-graduate student Vitaly Salikov sent the rector’s order to the university with the following content: “exclude the use of social networks Facebook and Instagram and among all participants in the educational process (students, teachers …..)” “. The document also said that the leaders departments of the university ordered “to acquaint everyone with the information against signature.”

The graduate student published this document, noting that the university sent information to employees “on the WhatsApp messenger, the same extremist company.” In his post, he also turned to the Ministry of Education of the Novosibirsk Region and Roskomnadzor with a request to clarify the “scale of the problem” – how legitimate such a university document is. The graduate student recalled that the Prosecutor General’s Office had previously stated that “persons will not be held liable only for the fact that they use Meta’s products.”

The university was quick to refute the allegations of misconduct, while confirming the authenticity of the rector’s order. According to KP.RUin the legal department of SGUVT stated that “this order concerned the official groups of the university, faculties”, and not the personal accounts of students and teachers.

“The university is an official institution, it should not use banned social networks,” the SGUVT said.

The decision to recognize Meta as extremist and ban it in the Russian Federation was made by the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow on March 21, 2022. Many Russian budgetary and commercial organizations, officials, public figures and ordinary users even before the court decision stopped publishing new posts in “forbidden social networks” and began to remove links to their accounts from other resources, including the “buttons” of Instagram and Facebook. Why the State University in Novosibirsk took up bringing its Internet activities in accordance with the law only 10 months later – as follows from the commentary – was not explained at the university.