Rossgram: Russia launches alternative to Instagram

Russia has announced to launch an alternative photo-video sharing platform by the name Rossgram, after it banned Instagram in Russia on March 14, Reuters reported. 

Russia had banned Facebook and Instagram in Russia after Meta allowed posts calling for violence against Russian troops. Meta had said that it would be unfair if Ukrainians were barred from expressing their resistance against the military forces.

Russian Tech entrepreneurs are finding a way to fill in the void created by the ban of Facebook and Instagram.

The new Russian alternate to Instagram, named Rossgram will be launched on March 28. It is set to have similar features to Instagram.

Alexander Zobov, the initiative’s public relations director, wrote on the VKontakte social network, “My partner Kirill Filimonov and our group of developers were already ready for this turn of events and decided not to miss the opportunity to create a Russian analogue of a popular social network beloved by our compatriots.”

Russia has filed a criminal investigation against Meta as a result of this conflict, painting it as an “extremist organisation”.

Rossgram is not the only alternate application being developed in Russia, an application named Yappy was also launched as an alternate to TikTok.

Zobov Vkontakte shared a photo of a probable scheme and layout of the Rossgram, the photo suggests that Rossgram’s scheme and layout could be similar to Instagram. 

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