Russia threatens to ban Google, Twitter and Facebook over extremist content

[okaawhatever]

Russia’s communications watchdog has threatened to fine Facebook, Google and Twitter and block their services under a controversial law on blogging.

In a letter to executives on on Monday, the director of the communications oversight agency warned that the three US companies could face sanctions if they continued alleged illegal activities in Russia, Izvestia newspaper reported on Wednesday.

Any action could affect a number of social media sites: besides its eponymous social network, Facebook also owns the photo-sharing service Instagram, while Google owns YouTube, BlogSpot and Google+. Facebook and Twitter, in particular, have been instrumental to organisers of opposition protests in Russia, where the major television news channels are controlled by the state.

A spokesman told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the watchdog’s complaints related mainly to deleting pages with extremist materials and receiving information under what is known as the “bloggers law”. This 2014 legislation requires popular bloggers to register their real identities with the authorities, a measure that prominent bloggers say is designed to have a curb free speech and criticism of the regime.

The agency’s deputy director, Maksim Ksenzov, had issued a warning to the three companies on 6 May, telling them they were in violation of the bloggers law because they had not provided requested data on the number of daily visitors to several users’ pages, as well as information allowing the authorities to identify the owners of accounts with more than 3,000 daily visitors.

Continued at Link:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/may/20/russia-threaten-ban-google-twitter-facebook-bloggers-law

Can't wait to see the Putinistas defend this.

[betterdemsonly]

1. China does the same, and the Saudis do much worse. We aren't starting WWIII over it

There are no putin defenders, only people who don't like warmongering.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. +1

[joshcryer]

5. Putin is a warmonger.

Thus is it perplexing to me how one could confuse them for Putin defenders while claiming said people are against warmongering.

[betterdemsonly]

8. There was no trouble until we decided to move Nato into the Ukraine

despite treaties with Gorbechev specifically agreeing not to do such a thing. Not to mention making an issue out of a base they held for hundreds of years in a part of the country that was traditionally russian and majority ethnic Russian. We changed policy, ,broke the treaties and that provoked it. We are the warmongers. The facebook/twitter stuff is probably a response to the conflict, quit frankly. We organized the coup through those media.

[Jamaal510]

3. I wonder what ordinary Russians

think of this, and whether this might negatively affect Putin's popularity there. The last time I checked about a year ago, his administration was actually fairly popular among Russians despite his negative image elsewhere.

[DetlefK]

7. Most Russians love him, the rest is fleeing in droves.

Russian emigration-numbers went up from ~10,000-20,000 per year to ~100,000-120,000 per year since Putin was reelected. It is mainly educated people (artists&scientists) and rich people that are leaving.

About 20-25% of Russians with higher education would leave Russia if they could. And those that leave aren't picky as to WHERE they are migrating to. Australia, Israel...
As for rich Russians, they prefer London.

Putin is fine with this: He welcomes the emigration as a way to get rid of troublemakers and opponents.

[Behind the Aegis]

4. And they move ever closer...

But other countries do it, so it's OK!

[bemildred]

6. I think you are going to see lots of countries clamping down on the web.

Having the proles able to self-organize is always annoying to autocrats and wannabe autocrats. Even though we have no privacy on the web, that's not good enough, they don't like us being able to talk anonymously, like talk was a threat.