'To protect Mother Russia': the Kremlin tries to force social networks to remove posts about Navalny and criticism of Putin

Meta (ex-Facebook) and Google face multimillion-dollar fines in Russia for refusing to remove content that Russian authorities call “harmful.” For example, calls for suicide or child pornography. But mostly we are talking about posts about protests in support of Alexei Navalny, reports BBC.

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In the summer of 2018, Russian poet Igor Derzhalov, writing under the pseudonym “Varyag Siberian,” posted a cartoon on his Facebook.

It depicted the coat of arms of Russia - a double-headed eagle.

But with the heads of President Vladimir Putin and then Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.

The poet accompanied the picture with a political poem, which begins with the phrase: “Historically, alas, we are mutants, slaves,” and ends with the emotional “When will the Russians wake up to remove the infection?”

Three years later, his slightly clumsy essay with obscene words was the reason for one of the many fines imposed on Facebook by the Russian authorities.

The authorities demanded that the social network delete Derzhalov’s post because it expresses “clear disrespect for the state, the constitution and the president of the Russian Federation.” The social network refused.

Since the beginning of 2021, Roskomnadzor has filed more than 60 lawsuits against Western social networks, demanding that they be fined for their unwillingness to block links to content considered “illegal” in Russia.

This opportunity appeared at the end of 2020, when the administrative code was supplemented with a corresponding article.

The Russian authorities are willing to take advantage of this: the total amount of fines imposed on social networks since the beginning of the year amounted to more than $ 2 million.

The number of lawsuits for imposing an administrative penalty for not deleting information from social networks since the beginning of 2021 (Instagram links are indicated in some lawsuits from Facebook):

• Facebook- 22
• YouTube-21
• Twitter- 16
• TikTok-4

According to Roskomnadzor, Western social networks do not want to remove “harmful” content. We are talking about approximately 469 links that are published within the solutions.

And it turned out that the overwhelming number of posts is related to politics.

"The Most Dangerous Things"

Complaining about the disobedience of Western social networks, the Russian authorities constantly appeal to the fact that they do not remove child pornography, suicide and drug propaganda.

But the number of such publications is tiny compared to protest content in court decisions.

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For example, 12 references are devoted to suicide, but some, from the point of view of common sense, bear little resemblance to the propaganda of suicide.

In 2019, a Facebook user from Orenburg shared the tragic news about the suicide of a 16-year-old couple of teenagers.

He accompanied the post with a sad smiley.

Facebook, despite the demands of the Russian authorities, did not delete it.

“The law obliges them [social networks] to find and block the most dangerous things themselves, including child pornography, suicide, drugs, extremism and fake news, which can lead to negative consequences for the safety of citizens,” Roskomnadzor head Andrei Lipov said in May. “That is, we want social networks to begin, together with the state, to be responsible for what happens on them.”

One of the tweets, which, according to the media regulator, incited minors to illegal actions, was published in the “Roissi Police” profile.

Attached to the post is a video recording of a conversation between several men in uniform - probably cadets of the Ministry of Internal Affairs school:

- [Thief's greeting].

- Salary for garbage.

— By the way, your salary hasn’t arrived?

- Salary for garbage!

Now this publication and two more tweets about AUE (“The prisoner way of life is one”) are not available in Russia.

In 2020, the Supreme Court recognized the AUE movement as an extremist organization and banned it.

Navalny and rallies

Nothing else is required by Roskomnadzor to be blocked as actively as publications about protest actions of the Russian opposition in support of Alexei Navalny.

On January 17, the politician returned from Germany, where he was undergoing treatment after alleged poisoning with the chemical warfare agent Novichok.

He was immediately arrested.

Supporters of Navalny urged Russians to march in support of him.

Of the 469 links, for the failure of which the social networks were fined, more than 250 are devoted to actions in defense of Navalny.
The reason is the same everywhere: the actions are not coordinated by the authorities, minors are being called to them, and all calls must be removed.

Number of references to “illegal” content in court decisions since the beginning of 2021:

• YouTube - out of 56 links 28 actions in support of Navalny, 15 miscellaneous, 3 suicide, 2 drugs, 3 child pornography, 3 radicalism, 2 disrespect for the authorities.
• Twitter-out of 121 links 70 actions in support of Navalny, 23 miscellaneous, 7 suicide, 4 drugs, 4 child pornography, 9 radicalism, 4 disrespect for the authorities.
• TikTok - out of 13 links, 13 actions in support of Navalny.
• Facebook-out of 115 links 94 actions in support of Navalny, 9 miscellaneous, 2 suicide, 3 drugs, 1 child pornography, 3 radicalism, 3 disrespect for the authorities.
• Instagram - out of 88 links 61 actions in support of Navalny, 17 miscellaneous, 7 suicides, 3 drugs, 1 child pornography, 3 radicalism, 3 disrespect for the authorities.

Two days before the first January action, political activist from Kaluga Konstantin wrote on his Twitter: “Eh... the time has come to defend Mother Rus'! #I'm Coming Out #freedom for Political Prisoners #IWe Are the Whole Country (hereinafter the spelling and punctuation in the posts are preserved).”

The publication did not contain a word about Navalny, and the date of the action was indicated in the photo attached to the tweet.

Nevertheless, Roskomnadzor found this tweet and demanded to block it.

Twitter complied.

“This Tweet from @konstantin_lar has been withheld in Russia in response to a legal demand (this tweet from @konstantin_lar was blocked in Russia in response to a legal demand),” this message is now seen by Russian users of the social network instead of a publication about “Mother Rus'” "

But the tweet has not been deleted: its access is limited from Russia, and through VPN and incognito mode, for example, it can be easily opened.

The activist said that he did not even pay attention to it.

But the former employee of Navalny's team from Kostroma, Alexander, unlike his associate, received a preliminary warning.

Twitter notified Alexander of receiving a request from Roskomnadzor, and then closed access to his message about the protest actions.

But again - only for Russian users.

The activist received the same notifications from VKontakte and Facebook.

Only Facebook did not restrict access to his publication, VKontakte demolished it.

Most of the accounts in which publications are prohibited by the Russian authorities do not have the largest audience - the number of subscribers in rare cases exceeds a hundred.

What requirements of the authorities of the social network ignored

Before going to court, Roskomnadzor sends thousands of notifications to companies demanding that certain publications be blocked for Russian users.

Roskomnadzor sent 7,6 thousand notifications on Facebook, 3,5 thousand on Instagram, the department reported.

This bombardment of notifications is not very effective - companies do not always comply with the requirements of the Russian supervisory agency.

On January 20, three days before the first rally in support of Navalny, Vera, a resident of Astrakhan, spoke on Facebook about her dream, unequivocally hinting at the upcoming rally.

“I had one dream: it was as if Alexey Navalny released an investigation about Putin, and then called on Astrakhan residents to go to Lenin Square on January 23 at 14:00. I don’t know if it’s a prophetic dream or not...” wrote Vera.

Roskomnadzor demanded to remove the post, but the social network ignored this requirement.

Tweets that have collected several thousand likes on accounts with a large audience are still available to Russian users - for example, the former mayor of Yekaterinburg Yevgeny Roizman or Navalny himself with his closest associates.

Most of the court decisions on fines for the Telegram messenger were also devoted to opposition actions.
Roskomnadzor demanded to remove about 40 posts about rallies.

The authorities tried to block even comments on news reposts about Navalny.

In one of the court decisions, there is a link to a comment from the telegram channel of politician Yulia Galyamina.

On January 18, she shared news from another channel, “Protests in the World,” about Navalny’s arrest.
A discussion unfolded under her message.

One of the chat participants named Mikhail wrote: “Everyone needs to marry Navalny and for a free Russia, Navalny returned for this, everyone will marry on January 23.”

Roskomnadzor demanded to delete his message.

Telegram did not do this.

Constitution and fake about Putin's vaccination

Not only content about the Russian opposition is censored by Roskomnadzor. Social networks are also fined for jokes about power.

In all social networks, Roskomnadzor found posts with “obvious disrespect for the state, the constitution and the president of the Russian Federation.”

On Twitter alone in the winter of 2020-2021, the regulator sent 75 notifications, demanding the removal of several of these posts.

Thus, Roskomnadzor demanded to block a tweet about amendments to the Constitution, written shortly before the 2020 referendum.

One user wrote that “the constitution [means nothing]” “if the content is not the will of the people.”

Twitter has blocked this post, it is now unavailable in Russia.

Roskomnadzor also called a three-year-old Instagram post with a picture of a roll of toilet paper with the words “Constitution of the Russian Federation” written on it as disrespect. “Happy holiday to everyone who lives on it!” — the author of the post wrote.

The social network, contrary to the demands of Roskomnadzor, did not block it.

On YouTube, the Russian authorities considered two videos to be offensive.

In one of them, a man performs a song, singing in a low voice that the “parashas” are again ruled by the re-elected “balding dwarf.”

In another video, a group of people mock a trial.

The defendants are played by three people with sacks on their heads, on their chests there are plaques with the names of high-ranking officials.

The author of this production is an activist from Tatarstan Kamir Yamadayev.

In March 2021, he was found guilty of justifying terrorism and insulting the authorities - the court sentenced Yamadayev to a fine of 300 thousand rubles.
He was also banned from administering his sites for 2,5 years.

Yamadayev’s video has more than 130 thousand views. YouTube did not block him.

In 2020, one Twitter user shared a tweet about President Vladimir Putin getting vaccinated. “#Peskov said that #Putin is not such a fool as to give himself a Russian coronavirus vaccine as part of a trial,” the post said.

The president’s press secretary, of course, didn’t say that.

On that day, Dmitry Peskov said that the head of state could not take part in vaccinations as a volunteer.

“The president cannot use an uncertified vaccine,” Peskov added.

Roskomnadzor called Peskov’s distorted quote “unreliable socially significant information that poses a threat to public order and public safety.”

In other words, it’s a fake.

What fines were awarded to companies

Lawsuits demanding that Google, Meta, Twitter and Telegram be fined for refusing to remove “illegal” content came from the authorities a month after the January protests in support of Navalny.

Each lawsuit contains links that the Russian authorities demand to be removed (from one to several dozen).

Ignoring the demands of the Russian authorities, the companies collect multimillion-dollar fines.

A Twitter spokeswoman at one of the court hearings stated that some publications at the time of the consideration of the case were removed.

But the appellate court decided that this has no legal significance, since the information from the social network was not blocked within the statutory period (XNUMX hours are given for this), which means that the company must pay a fine.

Repeated violations can lead to much more severe penalties.

On December 24, a court in Moscow will consider claims against Meta and Google.

For “repeated failure to delete information,” companies face a fine of 5% to 10% of their annual revenue in Russia.

Meta does not disclose the volume of its revenues in Russia.

The turnover of the Russian legal entity Google in 2020 amounted to more than $1 billion, according to the SPARK-Interfax database.

In this case, if the court satisfies the requirements of the authorities, we can talk about a fine of at least $ 100 million.

How much social networks were fined

For 2020-2021, social networks were fined $ 2 for not deleting content and $ 106 for not storing personal data:

• Meta-fines for $ 1, of which non-deletion of content $ 255, ​​non-storage of personal data $ 686.
• Google fines for $ 540, of which non-deletion of content $ 080, non-storage of personal data $ 499.
• Twitter fines for $ 891, of which non-deletion of content $ 132, non-storage of personal data $ 607.
• TikTok - $ 54 fines - all for not deleting content.

Moreover, if companies refuse to pay these fines, it will be difficult for bailiffs to collect them.

There are no official representations of companies in Russia, only Google has a legal entity.

Is it censorship?

Russian authorities do not hide the fact that fines are a tool to force services to cooperate.

“Previously, there was only a linear scheme, when the only thing you could do if they didn’t listen to you was to stop the service in the country. This mechanism is not very effective, said the head of Roskomnadzor, Andrei Lipov, in May. — In general, the resource can be convenient and useful for users. We have introduced increased fines […], this greatly motivates the sites. We haven’t looked at these fines yet, but we will.”

The Russian authorities have the legal opportunity to block all social networks even tomorrow. But they don't. “Our citizens use these social networks, and blocking them will cause more harm to society than good,” said a former senior Roskomnadzor official. He requested anonymity for security reasons.

The leading lawyer of the Roskomsvoboda project, Sarkis Darbinyan, agrees with the official. He believes that blockages do not occur rather for economic reasons.

“Russia and Russian users are very strongly integrated into the world economy and, of course, blocking is not a legal or technical issue. This was sorted out a long time ago - there are laws and opportunities. This is an economic issue - large advertisers will suffer greatly,” Darbinyan said.

“Neither Roskomnadzor nor the Kremlin want to say that there is political censorship in Russia. At the same time, populist things such as child protection are used. In order to explain to the general public why all this struggle is needed, a child’s tears are used,” the expert notes.

He believes that the topic of suicides, drugs or child pornography is contrary to the own policy of Western social networks, so they cannot have any disagreements with the Russian media regulator here.

“The exception is absurd cases like a post about suicide with a sad emoticon,” says Darbinyan.

Do companies cooperate with Russian authorities?

Western social networks are trying to cooperate with the Russian authorities.

Twitter, after a slowdown in traffic in the spring of 2021, removed 91% of links with “prohibited information,” Roskomnadzor claimed.

Since then, restrictions on the social network have been eased: now the slowdown is felt only in the work of Twitter via the mobile Internet.

What social networks are popular in Russia (users, million people):

• Youtube- 78,5
• VKontakte - 71,5
• Instagram- 60,7
• TikTok-40,6
• Odnoklassniki-3 9,5
• Facebook- 35,7
• Twitter- 12,8

In October, Google representatives held online talks with the State Duma's Security and Anti-Corruption Committee.

In social networks, this event caused a mixed reaction.

IT experts considered that the company went for it in order to save its business in Russia.

“Any country for a large company is a source of income,” noted Irina Levova, director of strategic projects at the Russian Institute for Internet Research. “They [Google] are interested in continuing to operate in the country. Our market, of course, is not the same as China, but it is also a source of both data and profit.”

Transparency reports from Meta, Google and Twitter show that the companies are satisfying some of the requests of the Russian authorities.

In the first half of 2021, Facebook restricted access to nearly 1800 posts or pages after receiving instructions from a Russian media regulator.

Of these, almost 900 contain extremist content, about 300 contain scenes of violence, the report indicated without further detail. The company does not indicate how many requests were rejected.

Twitter has not yet published statistics for 2021, but last year the Russian authorities sent him more than 15 thousand instructions, and almost a quarter of the social network satisfied. Most of the requests from the authorities concerned information on methods of suicide.

The Russian authorities accounted for 16% of all government inquiries that Twitter received worldwide in 2020.

The leading states in terms of the number of requests to remove content from Google services as of December 31.12.2020, 123: these are Russia (606 removal requests), Turkey (14), India (231) and the United States (9).

Google for the first half of the year received from the Russian media regulator more than 15 thousand requests to remove information from YouTube.

In general, over the past 10 years, Google has received as many requests to delete information from the Russian authorities as from other countries combined.

A third of all requests concern “national security,” which presumably includes extremist and political materials.

In 2021, the company rejected only 8% of requests from the Russian authorities.

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The pressure on Google has obviously increased: just two years ago, in 2019, the company turned down almost 50% of all requests.

Twitter and Google said they were not ready to comment on their relationship with the Russian authorities.

Facebook did not answer questions. Their opponents from Roskomnadzor did the same.

But a former high-ranking official of Roskomnadzor explained that large fines are a “weak point” of Western social networks, which the Russian authorities found. And now they will hit her, he is sure.

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