After exactly three years, Russian lawmakers have abandoned the government’s so-called “bloggers’ registry,” where popular bloggers were listed and theoretically subjected to more stringent media regulations, report the Russian media.
According to a law passed in 2014, Russia’s telecom regulator Roskomnadzor has added several hundred mass media accounts, online communities, and public figures to the registry, but it never became an effective regulatory tool or prosecutory mechanism.
“Bloggers who were added to this list are now again free to write anonymously, publish obscenities and pornography, and publish unverified information,” the online publication Meduza notes ironically.
Paradoxically, the removal of the bloggers’ registry is part of newly adopted laws which aim to tighten state control over the Internet.
