According to Reuters, the website of communications watchdog
Roskomnadzor has said that one of
Shutterstock’s domains was blocked in Russia on November 13th by the country's Attorney General because the site contained "insulting state symbols."
The image in question appears to have been one of a miniature Russian flag planted in a pile of feces.
Earlier this year President Vladimir Putin signed into law tough fines for those who spread online what the authorities regard as "blatant disrespect" for the state, the authorities, the public, the Russian flag or the constitution.
Shutterstock told Reuters that, "We're aware of content that has been deemed objectionable by the regulatory body in Russia," referring to Roskomnadzor. "The content has already been removed and Shutterstock is continuing to work with the agency to remove thumbnail images from the site."
Roskomnadzor countered Shutterstock's comments, saying the "banned information has not been deleted."
The watchdog added that specific Shutterstock pages had also been blocked for showing ways to commit suicide.
We checked the Shutterstock website and there are 16,549 with the keyword “feces” on the site and 120 of them have both the words “feces” and “Russia” as keywords. The site also contains
5,276 images with the keywords “commit suicide.”