A group on Vkontakte, Russia’s leading social network, is being accused of encouraging teen suicide. A criminal case against the owners of the group has been launched in St. Petersburg, a statement published by the Russian Investigative Committee said Friday. If found guilty of promoting suicide, those involved may face up to five years imprisonment. …
Criminal case launched into Russian pro-suicide social media group Read More
Earlier this month a court in the western Russian city of Tver has sentenced a man to over two years in prison for reposting photographs on social network VKontakte, The Moscow Times has reported. Mechanical engineer Andrei Bubeev reposted material originally published by Russian journalist Boris Stomakhin. The editor of the monthly newspaper Radikalnaya Politika (Radical Politics), …
Russian man sentenced to prison for reposting photographs on social network Read More
In an article published yesterday in the Kommersant Vlast weekly, the head of Russia’s Investigative Committee Alexander Bastrykin has proposed a range of measures to give a “strong, appropriate and balanced response” to the information war that he claims the US and its allies are waging against Russia. The measures include imposing new restrictions on the Internet: Bastrykin …
On behalf of taxi drivers, the Federation of Russian Car Owners (FAR) has filed a complaint with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev over the low prices dictated by taxi service aggregators, the RBC news agency reported Tuesday. The complaint by FAR said that the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS) had refused to initiate legal action against Uber, …
Russian taxi drivers complain over Uber’s pressure on prices Read More
Moments after the scheduled starting time, Russian space agency Roscosmos tweeted this picture of the ExoMars mission’s successful start. The historical venture — a joint European and Russian project — had been creating a lot of buzz on social media all morning, with #ExoMars a trending topic on Twitter in many countries. And post-launch, Twitter …
Historical ExoMars launch makes waves on social media Read More
It was a throwaway comment, forgotten almost the minute it was written. Then again, Viktor Krasnov could hardly have predicted the trouble those three words —”God doesn’t exist” — would cause. He couldn’t have imagined that two VKontakte users would file a formal complaint to the authorities, claiming the comment “insulted” them; that police would show up at his apartment in the southern Russia …
Like, share, convict: Russian authorities target social media users Read More
A Russian blogger has filed a complaint to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, challenging the sentence he was handed for the republication of extremist texts online, the Kommersant newspaper reported Wednesday. Konstantin Zharinov, a blogger and activist from the Urals region of Chelyabinsk, was convicted in 2015 for sharing a post on …
Russian blogger appeals to Strasbourg court over social media case Read More
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in late February, Pavel Durov looked like a man in control. Dressed all in black — a nod to the character of Neo in the film The Matrix — Durov strode across the stage assertively. Like Neo, he was a programmer on a mission. Durov had come to Barcelona to announce that Telegram, the encrypted messaging service, had gathered 100 million monthly users and was gaining an impressive 350,000 …
How Telegram became the Durov brothers’ weapon against surveillance Read More
Russian Internet giant Mail.ru Group has topped a ranking of the most valuable companies operating in the Russian Internet segment for the first time, according to a rating released by the Russian version of Forbes magazine Monday. Mail.ru Group includes the mail.ru portal as well as the Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki social networks, and managed to …
Mail.ru overtakes Yandex as most valuable Russian Internet company Read More
Rutracker.org, the world’s largest Russian-language torrents website, has deprived copyright holders of the ability to delete illegal downloads, the IT-website Roem.Ru reported Tuesday. “It has been announced officially (…) that all CNA-accounts [which granted copyright holders the authority to delete links to illegal downloads] have been switched to regular user mode,” Oleg Yashin from the intellectual …
Russian torrents website strips copyright holders of their rights Read More
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s newly appointed Internet adviser has links to an illegal torrent website, the business daily Vedomosti reported Monday. German Klimenko is the former owner of Torrnado.ru — a torrent website offering illegal downloads of movies and series, Vedomosti said, citing two of the well-known Internet entrepreneur’s “acquaintances.” The business was handed over …
Putin’s new Internet adviser reportedly former owner of illegal torrent website Read More
You could be a fluffy bunny. You could be a scary Zombie. You could even be Conchita Wurst. But you just had to be Stalin, huh? In a country as keen on Instagram as Russia, anything that helps you up your selfie game has a good chance of attracting attention. But the recently launched MSQRD …
