This is the first Google service to be censored by the Russian authorities, who have already blocked several large US digital platforms.
Le Monde
Russian Internet users meet from Thursday 24 March in the morning, great difficulty accessing Google News, the Google Press Articles Aggregation Service.
Roskomnadzor, the authority responsible for internet censorship, indeed explained In a press release sent to the Russian press agencies have decided to “restrict access” to Google News in the country, decision taken at the request of the Russian floor. The media regulator criticizes Google News for allowing “access to numerous publications and content containing false information (…) on the special military operation in Ukraine”, thus recording the terms chosen by the Kremlin to designate its invasion.
“We have confirmed that some people encounter difficulties in accessing the application and the Google News site in Russia, and this is not due to technical difficulties on our side”, explained a spokesman for Google.
Data from the Open Observatory of Network Interference, an organization dedicated to the detection of censorship operations on the Internet confirm that news.google.com is very difficult for Russia, since March 24th.
The first time Google service is blocked
This is the first time a Google service is affected by restrictions of the Russian state, which has already taken to block Instagram or Facebook. Russian justice comes, moreover, to judge as “extremists” the activities of these two social networks.
According to many observers, the YouTube video service, widely used in Russia, could be the next on the list. In recent days, Roskomnadzor has repeatedly demanded YouTube to recover deleted channels, qualifying the platform of “Antirusse Information War Tool”. On March 19, the authority thus reproached the “censorship” videos of many accounts, including that of the RBC media, the Perviy Kanal television channel or the RIA Novosti news agency.