MOSCOW, March 12 (RAPSI) — Facebook has notified Roskomnadzor that the social network complied with the body’s request to remove pages and accounts that advertised vacancies of drug mules, the press service of Russia’s media watchdog informs on Friday.

In order to protect Russian citizens from malicious content, on March 5 Roskomnadzor sent a letter to the address of the Facebook administration, demanding that it immediately take measures to prevent publications advertising vacancies of drug couriers, among them those popularizing and positively evaluating these unlawful activities, in this social media. Roskomnadzor reminded that the distribution of such information on the territory of the Russian Federation is prohibited.

The media watchdog also demanded from Facebook to check and bring its moderation and pre-moderation mechanisms as to advertising and user content in compliance with Russian laws. Representatives of Facebook reported to Roskomnadzor that the pages and accounts that disseminated advertising on which the agency pointed out were removed. Nevertheless, the investigation into the matter is to be continued, the statement reads.

According to the national Code of Administrative Offenses, violations of the procedures for restricting access to this kind of unlawful content, as well as failures to remove prohibited information on the part of the owners of the respective Internet resources entails administrative fines ranging from 3 to 8 million rubles ($41,000 to $68,000 at the current exchange rate) where it concerns legal entities. In case of a re-offense, the amount of the fine is to be increased so to make up to one fifth of the total amount of the respective company's annual revenue.