According to the human rights group “Sova,” which monitors the enforcement of anti-extremism legislation in Russia, 119 people were convicted last year of criminal activity for posting and reposting content on Vkontakte, Russia’s leading social network. For comparison: in 2015, police went after only three users of Odnoklassniki (another Russian social network) and just a single Facebook user.
In 2016, nearly every day there is a new report of another Vkontakte user falling afoul of the law for posting or reposting something deemed to be illegal. Recently, on July 1, for instance, a man living in Sevastopol was charged with extremism for remarks he published online insulting fans of the soccer team “Spartak.”
Independent online publication Meduza asked four experts to explain why it is nearly always Vkontakte users, and almost never people on other social networks, who seem to be prosecuted for breaking Russia’s laws against extremism.
Why Russian police targets people on Vkontakte rather than on FacebookRead More
