Russian has found Facebook and Twitter both guilty of breaking internet privacy law and punished them with NZ$70 (3,000 rubles) fines.
A Moscow court handed out the fines after the mega-corporations failed to comply with a law that required them to store the personal data of Russian users on servers inside the country.
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Though the law has been in effect since 2015, it has only rarely been enforced.
Previously, the most high-profile case involved corporate networking site LinkedIn which was banned and blocked by local ISPs in November 2016.
The fines handed out to Facebook and Twitter are the minimum which the court could have imposed, and are the first steps in the legal process that will eventually allow Russian authorities to ban both social networks inside Russia's borders.
While Twitter has publicly stated it will move to comply with the law, Facebook has yet to publish any kind of opinion on the case.
Neither company elected to defend themselves in court.
Newshub.
