Russia threatened to ban Facebook, China blocked WhatsApp, South Korea considered banning Tumblr

Russian officials say they will consider banning Facebook from early 2018 if the social network refuses to abide by their country's new user protection and privacy regulations.

Earlier, Russia banned LinkedIn for the same reason since November 2016. Under the country's new law, Facebook must store Russian users' data on servers located in Russia and cannot transfer abroad.

"We will make sure the law is enforced or they will have to stop working in Russia," said Alexander Zharov, head of Roskomnadzor - Russia's Information and Communications Technology Supervision Agency. 'There will be no exceptions'.

Facebook was also waiting until early 2018. Twitter approved the new law

Zharov said that Facebook will have to comply with the new law from the beginning of 2018, otherwise it will be banned. Roskomnadzor manages the sites by which local service providers must block. They used this list to temporarily block sites like Wikipedia, Reddit or PornHub.

Zharov also said that Twitter agreed with Russian regulations and informed Roskomnadzor the plan to transfer Russian user data to Russian servers in mid-2018.

China banned WhatsApp

The Chinese government has finished enforcing the ban with Facebook's WhatsApp messaging application after blocking the application since mid-July, preventing files and images from being sent and then video call blocking.

Russia threatened to ban Facebook, China blocked WhatsApp, South Korea considered banning Tumblr Picture 1
China completed the prohibition of WhatsApp

According to a recent report, the country upgraded the Great Firewall technology to detect and block the NoiseSocket protocol that WhatsApp uses to send messages.

Authorities did not give official reasons but it could be related to what WhatsApp supports the encrypted conversation that China's monitoring tool cannot break.

Tumblr faces being banned in South Korea due to pornography

Also this week, South Korea said it was considering banning Tumblr after the company refused to remove pornography from its website.

According to one report, Tumblr received 22,468 requests from the Korean government from February to June related to pornography on blogs but declined all, saying that they operate in the United States, without pillars. stay in Korea and not follow Korean law.

'We consider blocking Tumblr if the problem becomes serious,' said Vice President KCSC (South Korea's Communications Standards Committee). He also said that Tumblr is famous for its loose policy and that is one reason why it is full of adult content. KCSC said about 10% of content on Tumblr is pure porn.