Russia has launched a probe against YouTube for “abusing” its dominant position in the market by making “biased” decisions about comment moderation, a government regulator said on Monday. The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service said that YouTube’s rules relating to the suspension or deletion of accounts are “opaque, biased and unpredictable.” “This leads to sudden blocking and …
Yandex Music announces today The Sound of Stars, a playlist of audio compositions celebrating the 60th anniversary of the first human flight into space. To create the playlist, the Yandex Music team used algorithms to convert the physical properties of stars, pulsars and galaxies into music, with each of the nine tracks dedicated to a …
‘The Sound of Stars:’ Yandex Music uses algorithms to turn cosmic bodies into art Read More
In late March Sber, the state-controlled financial and digital giant previously known as Sberbank, took control of a Russian video creation startup called Movika. Sber announced its subsidiary Digital Assets acquired a 58% stake in Movika and could increase it to 80% in the future. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Movika’s technology allows …
Startup Recipe, a leading tech news outlet from South Korea, and East-West Digital News, the international resource on tech innovation in Eastern Europe, have teamed up to provide their respective audiences with new insights. Startup Recipe now offers a selection of translated EWDN content on its website. In the past few weeks, through this content …
Korean tech news site teams up with EWDN to bridge global innovation Read More
An investment fund controlled by Alexey Nechaev, the founder of Russian direct sales leader Faberlic, has acquired Sports.ru with affiliated blogging and marketing assets. The amount of the deal was not disclosed. Sports.ru is a leading Russian-language sports media and community platform. Founded by a journalist in 1998, the platform was sold in 2006 to Herman …
Russian direct sales giant Faberlic acquires Sports.ru to develop vertical communities Read More
A bevy of prominent business angels have backed Voices, a Russian-founded micropodcasting startup based in California. Two million US dollars were contributed by Signal founder Moxie Marlinspike, Tinder founder Justin Mateen, Shutterstock founder John Oringer, eBay founder Peter Thiel, MSQRD co-founders Sergey Gonchar, Evgeny Negen and Andrey Yanchurevich, alongside a few others. Voices co-founder Alexey …
MegaFon, a major Russian mobile operator and retailer, has increased its stake in video service Start to 50%, as reported by business daily Kommersant. The move follows the acquisition of 33.8% of the company, announced in October 2020. The valuation of the startup — which was founded in 2017 — could reach or exceed 4 billion rubles (some …
Russian telecom majors MegaFon and MTS invest in the startup space Read More
Russia will fine seven social media companies for not removing pro-Navalny videos ahead of last Saturday’s nationwide protests, the country’s communications regulator said Wednesday. “Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, VKontakte, Odnoklassniki and YouTube will be fined for non-compliance with requirements to prevent the dissemination of calls to minors to participate in unauthorized rallies,” Roskomnadzor said in …
Russia to fine social media giants for keeping up pro-Navalny videos Read More
Messaging service Parler, popular among the far right and ex-US President Donald Trump’s more radical supporters, was removed by the Apple store and blocked by Amazon earlier this month. But it bounced back this week with a Russian accent. Parler’s return is at least partially due to the work of Russian IT firm DDoS-Guard, whose …
How a Russian IT company saved US far-right app Parler Read More
Just days after Alexey Navalny’s arrest in the Moscow airport and the publication of his killer video on “Putin’s palace,” a digital rebellion is underway in Russia, involving millions of teenagers and elder users of social media. As of Jan. 21, the investigative video on the luxury mansion had broken all records, garnering more than 50 million …
On December 25, the Federation Council, Russia’s upper house of parliament, approved a bill against “censorship” of Russian media and other illegitimate restrictions to content distribution on the Internet. The new law targets Internet resources, including foreign ones, that restrict “distribution of socially significant information in the territory of the Russian Federation on the grounds of nationality, language, origin, property and …
Just days after the triumphant NASDAQ IPO of Ozon, a leading Russian e-commerce company, another Russian digital major, ivi.ru, has started the registration procedure for a US IPO. No IPO-related documents related to Cyprus-registered company ‘ivi.ru Media Ltd’ are available yet on the SEC’s website, but two unnamed sources “close to the company” confirmed, in an …
Media reports: Online video service ivi.ru starts NASDAQ registration procedure Read More
