The decision by American tech giant Meta to ban RT and other Russian news networks is a symptom of the dwindling power of the US and its allies, Iranian professor Seyed Mohammed Marandi has suggested.
The Tehran University academic spoke to RT on Tuesday about the latest crackdown on Russian media by the US government and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.
“[Major] social media companies are controlled by the United States. They are effectively arms of the state,” Marandi said, explaining why he believes Meta’s decision should be seen as a move by Washington.
The US previously tolerated some dissenting opinions in the press, but is increasingly silencing them completely or “shadowbanning” voices it dislikes, the professor added.
“As the West further declines, I think that intolerance is just going to increase more,” he predicted.
BRICS nations should do the same thing with social media that they are doing with international commerce, where they are introducing payment methods and other financial mechanisms independent of the US dollar, Marandi suggested.
“If the regime in Washington wants to control X or Facebook – fine. But they shouldn’t be able to prevent Iranians from saying what they want to say, or Russians from being able to speak to the world, or Chinese people from being able to speak to their neighbors,” he said.
Watch the entire interview with Marandi below.