An online tactical voting initiative backed by jailed campaigner Alexey Navalny has been removed from app stores on the eve of Russia’s parliamentary elections, after Moscow hit out at tech firms it says were circumventing a ban.
The opposition figure’s team confirmed on Friday that the ‘Smart Voting’ platform had been taken down from both Apple’s AppStore and Google Play services after the country’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, called on the American tech firms to implement a government-ordered block. Officials had previously threatened the US firms with hefty fines if they refused to implement the change, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of dollars in financial penalties imposed for previous breaches.
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