Russia backs down on threat to block Twitter over banned content

Russian officials are no longer threatening to cut off the country’s access to Twitter after the social network ramped up its efforts to purge content banned by that nation.

Roskomnadzor, Russia’s communications watchdog, backed down on the threat Monday but said it would continue throttling the speed of Twitter’s website over an alleged proliferation of illegal posts. The agency started slowing down Twitter’s web traffic on March 10 and said it could block the social network entirely if the company did not remove the prohibited materials, including “child pornography, pro-narcotic and suicidal content.”