Social networks & apps

Russian man sentenced to prison for reposting photographs on social network

May 18, 2016

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), …

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Award-winning Russian face recognition technology used to harass young women and track pyromaniacs

September 29, 2020

A face recognition app called ‘FindFace‘ is sparking controversy in Russia over the destructive power of new technologies with regards to user privacy. Released in February by NtechLab, a startup established last year in Moscow, FindFace helps put names to faces on a picture. Combining facial recognition software with neural networks, the app will automatically match the image to people’s social media pages on Vkontakte, …

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VKontakte and Warner Music Group settle legal battle out of court

April 15, 2016

Last week VKontakte (VK.COM), the leading social network in Russia and a property of LSE-listed Mail.ru Group, announced the settlement of its legal battle with Warner Music Group (WMG) through a confidential out-of-court agreement. Under the agreement, VK users will be provided with legal access to WMG content though UMA, a Russian supplier of music content, and other authorized platforms. …

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Historical ExoMars launch makes waves on social media

March 15, 2016

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 …

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Like, share, convict: Russian authorities target social media users

March 13, 2016

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 …

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Russian social network Vkontakte wins legal battle against Universal Music and Warner Music

April 15, 2016

VKontakte (VK), the leading social network in Russia and a property of LSE-listed Mail.ru Group, has won a legal battle against Universal Music and Warner Music. In two verdicts handed down on March 2 and 3, the Saint Petersburg & Leningradsky Region Appeal Court overturned an earlier ruling that VK must implement effective technology to stop infringements …

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Universal and Warner Music groups win case against VKontakte

February 12, 2016

Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group have claimed an important victory in their fight to stop copyright infringement by VKontakte, Russia’s largest social network and the country’s most popular provider of music. A Russian court has ruled that VKontakte must introduce technology to effectively prevent the unauthorised upload of the companies’ sound recordings on to …

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Russia’s VKontakte to launch rival to Instagram

July 23, 2015

Russian social network VKontakte is on the verge of releasing a mobile application along the lines of popular photo-sharing service Instagram, news agency RBC reported earlier this month, citing two unidentified people familiar with the company’s plans. VKontakte applied to Apple a few days ago to have the application distributed through the U.S. tech giant’s …

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Facebook and Instagram say no thanks to Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov

February 16, 2016

The Facebook account of Dmitry Kiselyov, one of Russia’s most recognizable news anchors and the head of state-owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya, was deleted just hours after it went live, last week. Kiselyov confirmed in an interview with newspaper Kommersant that the new Facebook account in his name had in fact belonged to him. His first Facebook post appeared on July …

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Israeli social analytics startup Klear secures $1.5 million from Altair and TMT

February 17, 2016

Israeli startup Klear, formerly known as Twtrland, has raised $1.5 million in new funding from Altair and TMT Investments, two international venture funds with Russian backers. The company defines its product as “a social intelligence platform that helps you do smarter marketing.” It has rebranded to Klear, since the platform now looks at data from Facebook and Instagram in …

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Facebook targets Roskomnadzor official over hate speech

February 17, 2016

Facebook has deleted a post written by Maxim Ksenzov, the deputy head of telecom regulator Roskomnadzor. Notably, Ksenzov is the very same official who warned Facebook back in May that the company will face penalties if it does not hand over traffic statistics for popular Russian Facebook users to the Russian government. While Ksenzov’s page may have …

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