China Censors the Internet. So Why Doesnt Russia?
By Anton Troianovski, 2/21/21, NY Times

MOSCOW €” Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of the
Kremlin-controlled RT TV network, recently called on the
govt to block access to Western social media.

She wrote: €œForeign platforms in Russia must be shut down.€�
Her choice of social network for sending that message: Twitter.
While the Kremlin fears an open internet shaped by American
companies, it just cant quit it.

Russias winter of discontent, waves of nationwide protests
set off by the return of the opposition leader Aleksei Navalny,
has been enabled by the countrys free and open internet. The
state controls the TV airwaves, but online Navalnys dramatic
arrest upon arrival in Moscow, his investigation into Putins
purported secret palace and his supporters calls for protest
were all broadcast to an audience of many millions.

For years, the Russian govt has been putting in place the
tech and legal infrastructure to clamp down on freedom of
speech online, leading to frequent predictions that the country
could be heading toward internet censorship akin to Chinas
great firewall.

But even as Putin faced the biggest protests in years last
month, his govt appeared unwilling €” and, to some degree,
unable €” to block websites or take other drastic measures
to limit the spread of digital dissent.

The hesitation has underscored the challenge Putin faces as
he tries to blunt the political implications of cheap high-
speed internet access reaching into the remote corners of the
vast country while avoiding angering a populace that has fallen
in love with Instagram, YouTube, Twitter and TikTok.

€œTheyre afraid,€� Dmitri Galushko, a Moscow telecom consultant,
said of why the Kremlin hasnt clamped down harder. €œTheyve
got all these weapons, but they dont know how to use them.€�

More broadly, the question of how to deal with the internet
lays bare a dilemma for Putins Russia: whether to raise
state repression to new heights and risk a public backlash
or continue trying to manage public discontent by maintaining
some semblance of an open society.

In China, govt control went hand in hand with the internets
early development. But in Russia, home to a Soviet legacy of
an enormous pool of engineering talent, digital entrepreneur-
ship bloomed freely for two decades, until Putin started
trying to restrain online speech after the antigovt protests
of 2011 and 2012.

At that point, the open internet was so entrenched in business
and society €” and its architecture so decentralized €” that it
was too late to radically change course. But efforts to censor
the web, as well as requirements that internet providers
install equipment for govt surveillance and control, gained
pace in bill after bill passed by Parliament. At the same
time, internet access continues to expand, thanks in part
to govt support.

Russian officials now say that they have the tech in place to
allow for a €œsovereign RuNet€� €” a network that would continue
to give Russians access to Russian websites even if the country
were cut off from the World Wide Web. The official line is that
this expensive infrastructure offers protection in case nefarious
Western forces try to cut Russias communications links. But
activists say it is actually meant to give the Kremlin the
option to cut some or all of Russia off from the world.

€œIn principle, it will be possible to restore or enable the
autonomous functioning of the Russian segment of the web,€�
Dmitri A. Medvedev, the vice chairman of Putins Security
Council and a former PM, told reporters recently. €œTechno-
logically, everything is ready for this.€�

Amid this years domestic unrest, Russias saber-rattling
directed at Silicon Valley has reached a new intensity.
Navalny has made expert use of Googles YouTube, Facebooks
Instagram and Twitter to reach tens of millions of Russians
with his meme-ready depictions of official corruption, down
to the $850 toilet brush he claimed to have identified at a
property used by Putin.

At the same time, Russia has appeared powerless trying to stop
those companies from blocking pro-Kremlin accounts or forcing
them to take down pro-Navalny content. (Navalnys voice is
resonating on social media even with him behind bars: On
Saturday, a court upheld his prison sentence of more than
two years.)

Russias telecom regulator, Roskomnadzor, has taken to
publicly berating American internet companies, sometimes
multiple times a day. On Wed, the regulator said that the
voice-chat social network Clubhouse had violated €œthe rights
of citizens to access info and to distribute it freely€� by
suspending the account of a prominent state TV host, Vladimir
Solovyov. On Jan. 29, it claimed that Google was blocking
YouTube videos containing the Russian national anthem,
calling it €œflagrant and unacceptable rudeness directed
at all citizens of our country.€�

Clubhouse apparently blocked Solovyovs account because of
user complaints, while Google said some videos containing
the Russian anthem had been blocked in error because of a
content rights issue. Clubhouse did not respond to a request
for comment.

In addition, as calls for nationwide protest proliferated
after Mr. Navalnys arrest last month, Roskomnadzor said
that social networks were encouraging minors to take part
in illegal activity.

The Russian social network VKontakte and the Chinese-owned
app TikTok partly complied with Roskomnadzors order to
block access to protest-related content. But Facebook
refused, stating, €œThis content doesnt violate our
community standards.€�

For all its criticism of American social media companies,
the Kremlin has used them extensively to spread its message
around the world. It was Facebook that served as a primary
tool in Russias effort to sway the 2016 US presidential
election. On YouTube, the state-controlled network RT has
a combined 14 million subscribers for its English, Spanish
and Arabic-language channels.

Ms. Simonyan, the editor of RT, says she will continue to
use American social media platforms as long as they are
not banned.

€œTo quit using these platforms while everyone else is using
them is to capitulate to the adversary,€� she said in a
statement to The NY Times. €œTo ban them for everyone is to
vanquish said adversary.€�

A law signed by Putin in Dec gives his govt new powers to
block or restrict access to social networks, but it has yet
to use them. When regulators tried to block access to the
messaging app Telegram starting in 2018, the 2-year effort
ended in failure after Telegram found ways around the
restrictions.

Instead, officials are trying to lure Russians onto social
networks like VKontakte that are closely tied to the govt.
Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of the state-owned natural gas
giant, has promised to turn its long-moribund video platform
RuTube into a competitor to YouTube. And in December it said
it had bought an app modeled on TikTok called €œYa Molodets€�
€” Russian for €œIm great€� €” for sharing short smartphone videos.

Andrei Soldatov, a journalist who has co-written a book on
the Kremlins efforts to control the internet, says the
strategy of persuading people to use Russian platforms is a
way to keep dissent from going viral at moments of crisis.
As of April 1, all smartphones sold in Russia will be required
to come pre-loaded with 16 Russian-made apps, including three
social networks and an answer to Apples Siri voice assistant
that is called Marusya.

€œThe goal is for the typical Russian user to live in a
bubble of Russian apps,€� Soldatov said. €œPotentially,
it could be rather effective.€�

Even more effective, some activists say, is the acceleration
of Putins machine of selective repression. A new law makes
online libel punishable by up to 5 years in prison, and the
editor of a popular news website served 15 days in jail for
retweeting a joke that included a reference to a January pro-
Navalny protest.

In a widely circulated video this month, a SWAT team in the
Pacific port city of Vladivostok can be seen interrogating
Gennady Shulga, a local video blogger who covered the protests.
An officer in a helmet, goggles and combat fatigues presses
Shulga shirtless to a tile floor next to two pet-food bowls.

€œThe Kremlin is very much losing the info race,€� said Sarkis
Darbinyan, an internet freedom activist. €œSelf-censorship
and fear €” thats what were heading toward.€�

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/21/w...ensorship.html