Google and Meta face the threat of multimillion-dollar fines for failing to remove content that the Russian government deems illegal on its territory, but a closer look at Russian court documents reveals that often this declared illegal content are simply posts about protests in support of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
In the summer of 2018, a Russian poet writing under the pseudonym Siberian Viking posted a cartoon on his Facebook account. It featured the double-headed eagle of the Russian coat of arms, with the bird’s heads replaced by the faces of President Vladimir Putin and then Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. Attached to it was a short poem, in which it was alleged that the eagle was twice as greedy as the others, lied twice as much, and kept watch with four eyes. It ended with a plea: “When will the Russians wake up to eliminate this beast?”
An iron censorship
The Russian government told Facebook to remove the post due to its ” blatant disrespect for the state , the constitution and the president of the Russian Federation.” Facebook did not comply, and the post appeared in one of more than 60 lawsuits launched against Western social networks in Russia this year, resulting in fines of more than 2 million euros.
It is unclear how many fines have actually been paid. But the cases highlight the difficulty of operating in a country where restrictions are placed on freedom of expression and political activity. For example, in a court ruling in June last year, the Anti-Corruption Foundation headed by imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny was declared an “extremist” organization, comparable to that of the Taliban or the Islamic State jihadist terrorist group.
According to the head of the Russian media regulatory commission, Andrei Lipov, social media companies are obliged to find and remove “the most dangerous things” , which he listed in an interview with the Kommersant newspaper as “child pornography, suicide, Drugs, Extremism and Fake News”.
But a close examination of the roughly 400 posts listed in the legal proceedings against Google, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter reveals that only nine refer to child abuse or drugs, and only 12 refer to suicide. The overwhelming majority are called to attend pro-Navalny rallies.
The pressure on social media companies dates back to 2015, when a law came into force that required them to store the personal data of Russian users on Russian territory and gave the government the power to fine or shut them down for not doing so. None of the Western companies have complied, leading to the closure of LinkedIn in 2016. Google, Meta and Twitter have been collectively fined more than €600,000 since the beginning of 2020. Efforts to control the spread of undesirable information on social media they are frantic.
