Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has been jailed for weeks, but authorities are struggling to silence online posts calling for more mass rallies against his detention. So they”re taking social media companies to court and even threatening to block access to their platforms in the country.
Twitter, Google, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok and Telegram are all targeted for allegedly failing to delete posts urging young people to take part in illegal protests. Court hearings began on Friday in Moscow.
Last month, Russia’s state internet regulator Roskomnadzor began disrupting Twitter services in the country, saying the platform had failed to comply with its requests to delete banned content.
On March 16, it even warned that unless Twitter complied within a month, it would consider blocking access to the platform outright.
Social media platforms have been instrumental this past year in bringing tens of thousands of Russians into the streets to demand the release of jailed opposition activist Navalny. The wave of demonstrations, the largest in years, has posed a major challenge to the Kremlin.
Controlling online information
Tanya Lokot, an associate professor at Dublin City University’s School of Communications, says Russia has been threatening social media for a while, but authorities are now ready, willing and able to take concrete action.
“They started issuing fines, threatening court sentences, and now they’re also throttling Twitter, so Twitter is a bit slower to load currently in Russia,” she told Euronews.
“Russia has built quite an infrastructure in terms of trying to preserve what they call their digital or Internet sovereignty. So currently they do have the technical capability to block platforms,” she added.
Over the years, Russian authorities have taken a comprehensive approach to “trying to control every sphere of online expression,” she said, citing laws that mandate registration of popular bloggers and require companies to store Russian users’ data on servers inside Russia.
While shutting down popular Western social media platforms in Russia might be feasible, it may not be effective in silencing opposition in the country, Lokot cautioned.
She noted that ever since Telegram was blocked in 2018, many Russians had learned how to use virtual private networks (VPN) to mask their IP address and access blocked content.
“People would still find ways to connect and mobilise and to come out to the streets,” Lokot said.
Watch the interview in the video player above.
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