The firm was convicted of “recurrence” for failing to delete its platforms with illegal content in Russia, linked, according to the authorities, the drug, the child pornography or under the “call for suicide” .
Le Monde with AFP
In Russia, a court sentenced Google, Friday, December 24, to a record fine of 7.2 billion rubles (about 87 million euros) for not deleting “prohibited” contents. In a statement on his Telegram account, the press service of the Moscow courts said that Google had been convicted of “recidivism” because the American company had not removed from its platforms of content deemed illegal.
In the case of Google as in the case of other social networks that are the subject of various prosecutions in Russia, the authorities put forward problems related to drugs relating to drugs, child pornography or the “call for suicide”. Vladimir Putin thus mentioned these themes repeatedly, making the fight against social networks a child protection issue – in March, he had taken away against “bastards who push the children to commit suicide”.
But this presentation does not correspond to reality. The Russian-speaking version of the BBC has thus studied the details of all the claims of the authorities studied by Russian justice since the beginning of the year 2021. of This work, published on December 21 , it appears that these contents represent a tiny part of the requests. These are the content relating to Alexei Navalny or calls to demonstrate that dominate: in the case of YouTube, owned by Google, it is half of the cases; In Facebook’s, almost full.
Project of a “sovereign Internet”
In September, just before the legislative elections, Moscow had forced Apple and Google, accused of “electoral interference”, to withdraw from their virtual stores the application of Mr. Navalny. The authorities threatened to stop employees from these companies in Russia if they did not cooperate, according to internal sources of these groups. Russia has also blocked several sites related to Mr. Navalny, whose organizations have been recognized as “extremists” by Russian justice.
In September, the Russian Telecom (Roskomnador) opponent also announced having blocked six virtual private networks (VPN) to access the growing number of banned websites in Russia. The authorities also develop a controversial system of “sovereign Internet” that will eventually give the opportunity to isolate the Russian net by separating the Great World Servers. The Kremlin denies building a national network under control, as is the case in China, but that’s what NGOs fear and opponents.
Russian power finally reinforces its hand on the champions of Russian digital. Past under the control of a subsidiary of the Gazrom Gazier Gérant, the Russian Tech Group VK, the mother house of the first social network of Russia, Vkontakte, thus announced in mid-December the appointment as President and CEO (CEO) of Vladimir Kirienko, son of a close collaborator of President Vladimir Putin.