A Russian court stated on Tuesday that American social media companies Facebook and Twitter were punished for not deleting content that Moscow deems illegal. Facebook received five fines totaling 21 million rubles (approximately US$288,000), Twitter received two fines totaling 5 million rubles (approximately US$69,000), and Telegram was fined 9 million rubles (approximately US$124,000).
Moscow has strengthened its control over the Internet, requiring companies to set up complete offices in Russia, and the data of Russian citizens must be stored in Russia. In order to support the development of domestic science and technology enterprises, Russia is also preparing to impose new taxes on foreign digital services.
In March, the Russian Federal Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media Supervision Agency (Roskomnadzor for short) began to accelerate the containment of Twitter because Twitter did not remove banned content fast enough.
An app appeared on the Internet, and the Navalny team is going to use this app to initiate a so-called smart voting activity. The Russian Federal Marshals hoped that Google would obey the court order to block searches related to the phrase smart voting. On Monday, the Russian National Marshal went to Google’s Russia office.
