Media: Facebook will open an office in Russia

As told to the newspaper "Izvestia" several anonymous sources, "familiar with the situation," Facebook decided to open a representative office in Russia and is now looking for a regional representative. The company has 35 international offices outside the United States, but has not had a Russian office yet. If they really decided to open it, then it is logical to assume that Facebook will enter into a dialogue with government agencies, comply with the requirements of the law and eventually someday transfer servers to Russia.



According to the law “On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection,” from January 1, each “organizer of information dissemination” is obliged to store in the Russian Federation metadata about the activity of Russians, that is, information on the reception, transmission and processing of “voice information, written text, images , sounds, video or other electronic messages ”- and provide this information at the request of government agencies.



Failure to comply with the requirement provides for a fine of up to 500 thousand rubles. In case of a repeated violation, the service will be blocked on the territory of the Russian Federation.



Facebook is the 7th most popular website in Russia, but the share of Russian users in the general Facebook audience is only 0.62% (12.4 million people from the general audience of 2.01 billion). Nevertheless, the company considered that the earnings on the Russian market were sufficiently noticeable to work “more closely” in this country, one of the informed sources told Izvestia.



ARPU Facebook average for the world is $ 4.23 per quarter . A simple calculation shows that the social network earns $ 209.8 million a year on “free” Russian users. To save this money and avoid blocking in 2018 , Facebook will have to share revenues with Russian hosts or invest in creating its own data center in Russia.



Twitter has written a letter to Roskomnadzor even earlier asking them not to block them. The company plans to transfer the personal data of Russians to the Russian Federation by mid-2018. Up to this point, Roskomnadzor promised not to check the company and not block the site.



Facebook did not comment on the search for a regional representative. Roskomnadzor said they did not know anything about Facebook’s intention to move servers to Russia. The press service added that in the near future Roskomnadzor intends to conduct a Facebook check for compliance with the requirements of the law. As Alexander Zharov said earlier, in case of non-compliance with the requirements, the social network may be blocked.