In January this year, Russia’s state-run television channel Rossia-24 aired a special report featuring an anonymous political blogger. His face was concealed behind a black mask and his voice artificially altered. Appearing on a wall-to-wall screen in front of a guest panel, the blogger explained he wasn’t interested in reaching a mass audience. He was publishing for …
How Telegram channeled Russia’s political intrigue Read More
Roskomnadzor, the Russian telecom and Internet regulator, received more than 118,000 reports of illegal online content this year, the agency said earlier this month. In the first six months of 2017, the watchdog received roughly 39,000 complaints related to drugs and drug use and a similar number of notifications flagging illegal games online. Other categories included child …
Russian Internet regulator reports increase in illegal online content Read More
There are already more than a hundred neo-Nazi groups with community pages on Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social network. The groups’ subscribers are users in Russia, the U.S., Germany, Sweden, and other countries. There are also a few dozen hate groups on Vkontakte created and populated entirely by foreigners. Some of these pages have as …
Following last weekend’s violence by far-right groups Charlottesville, a number of technology companies are taking steps to boot neo-Nazis and other hate groups off their services. Among them are security service provider Cloudflare and Internet domain registrar GoDaddy, which abruptly stopped serving the American neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer. The site sought a haven in Russia, but it was …
The Russian government is likely to hire the services of Mail.Ru Group, a leading Internet group, to boost voter turnout in next year’s presidential election, the business publication RBC reported Wednesday. The authorities bet such a digital strategy is likely designed to dispel concerns about a weak mandate for Russia’s next president. According to RBC, a …
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, …
Censors retreat: Russian bloggers no longer required to officially registered Read More
Early on July 9 Anton Nossik, 51, passed away. He was with friends at a dacha when he suffered a sudden heart attack. One of the founders of the Russian Internet, Nossik founded several large news sites, including Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru. “It was Nossik who came up with [a vision for] Russian online media, and …
Anton Nossik, one of the founders of the Russian Internet, dies of heart attack Read More
Issued Thursday, a 27-page Presidential executive order titled “Development Strategies for Russian Information Society from 2017 to 2030” is instructing the federal government to devise new mechanisms to rein in online media and limit Internet users’ anonymity. The Russian president is giving the government six months to reform its strategy for policing “means of providing …
Executive order may put Internet media and online anonymity under new pressure Read More
On Sunday, as Russia was witnessing mass anti-corruption protests, Yandex’s local news feed for Moscow prominently featured trivialities such as weather reports and promotions for the city’s “Spring Festival.” On the national level, protests were overshadowed by news like Russia’s reaction to Kiev banning its Eurovision contestant, reports The Moscow Times. It’s no secret that …
Yandex’s news service almost blind to mass anti-corruption protests Read More
A Russian technology executive who was named in a dossier containing unverified allegations about connections between President Trump and the Russian government has sued BuzzFeed News, which published the information. The defamation suit was filed in court on Friday in Broward County, Fla., according to lawyers for the executive, Aleksej Gubarev, the chief of XBT, …
Russian tech executive sues BuzzFeed over unverified Trump dossier Read More
On Wednesday Facebook banned RT, the Kremlin-funded Russian TV channel formerly known as Russia Today, from posting articles, photos, and videos to Facebook. Announced after RT allegedly ran a pirated stream of Obama’s last press conference, the ban was intially scheduled to be lifted at on Saturday, the day after Trump’s inauguration. But the ban lasted no longer than 20 hours. …
Facebook bans then unbans Russia’s RT prior to Trump inauguration Read More
Alexander Mamut is now the sole owner of Rambler&Co, Russia’s fourth Internet group in terms of audience, via his investment vehicle A&NN Investments. Mamut, which held a 50% stake in the group since its formation in 2013, has paid $295 million to Vladimir Potanin to acquire the remaining 50%, exercising an option which was part of the …
Alexander Mamut buys Vladimir Potanin’s stake in Rambler&Co Read More
