By Thomas Grove
MOSCOW -- Russia's government was quick to use social media when
it tried to steer the course of U.S. elections, American officials
say. It isn't quite as eager to see its own opponents at home try
the same thing.
Ahead of a parliamentary vote later this year, the Kremlin has
been fine-tuning its strategy to pressure platforms such as
Twitter, YouTube and TikTok to remove antigovernment content,
classifying a growing number of posts as illegal and issuing a
flurry of takedown requests.
So far it appears to be working. The Western-dominated tech
giants have in many instances complied. YouTube temporarily removed
links to content laying out the opposition's voting strategy.
Russian officials say Twitter is working to comply with requests to
remove content that Moscow deems illegal. TikTok, owned by China's
ByteDance Ltd., also removed or altered a handful of videos that
criticized the government and promoted opposition street
protests.
TikTok, Twitter and Google, the Alphabet Inc. subsidiary that
owns YouTube, say they decide whether to delete content based on
local laws where they operate and on their own internal guidelines.
None of the companies commented on specific cases mentioned in this
article.
September's election has injected fresh urgency into expanding
Russian President Vladimir Putin's ability to control political
debate in the country. Just as he consolidated power early on in
his reign by nationalizing television broadcasters or selling them
to government-friendly owners, the Kremlin is now turning its
attention to the internet, one of the last few refuges of free
speech. The move is meant to help the ruling party, United Russia,
which has seen its popularity drop amid a steady decline in living
standards and is now preparing to bat off any challenge ahead of
the elections from supporters of Alexei Navalny, a prominent
dissident who is serving a 2 1/2 -year prison term.
The government has laid much of the legal framework to increase
pressure on the social media companies, including new legislation
authorizing fines for companies that fail to follow censorship
rules and expanding its powers to shut down their local units if
they don't remove content the government deems illegal.
Authorities have repeatedly fined social media companies since
the beginning of the year and threatened to block Twitter and
subjected it to a series of service slowdowns, known as throttling,
for failing to delete posts flagged by authorities. Last month,
Russia's censorship agency said Facebook and Twitter had to store
their data on Russian users on servers inside Russia by July 1 or
face new fines.
Mr. Putin has described the efforts as an important step in
countering Western aggression and disinformation. Kremlin spokesman
Dmitry Peskov said Russian regulators are simply enforcing the law,
while political analysts consider the clampdown part of a broader
effort to deprive the president's opponents of a voice since a wave
of protests last year and earlier in 2021. Last week Mr. Putin
signed a law that would prevent Mr. Navalny's allies from
participating in elections if a judge later this month declares the
group an extremist organization.
"There is political will in Russia now to go after social media
giants," said Andrei Soldatov, a senior fellow at the
Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis. "And in the
context of the government crackdown on activists, the Kremlin has
developed the tools to pressure these big companies to go after
opposition content."
Russia's new approach mirrors how other governments around the
world are trying to prevent social media becoming an outlet for
their critics. In April, the Indian government ordered Twitter and
Facebook to take down posts about its Covid-19 crisis. China blocks
Western social media entirely and Iran blocks critical content
while trying to flood platforms such as Clubhouse and Twitter with
pro-government voices. Nigeria last week suspended Twitter's
operations and has threatened to prosecute anyone there using the
platform after Twitter deleted a tweet posted by Nigeria's
president that some critics interpreted as a threat of
violence.
Worldwide, Google data shows takedown requests from governments
have skyrocketed in recent years, doubling in 2020. In Russia, the
company took down 329,000 videos from YouTube, a 10% jump from the
previous quarter.
TikTok said Russian regulators had increased content removal
requests since January and that social media companies in general
had, in turn, deleted more posts.
For years, Mr. Navalny's choice of YouTube to publish his
exposés of alleged corruption among high-ranking government
officials raised the ire of Russian authorities. The confrontation
between the Kremlin and the tech companies, however, came to a head
earlier this year when younger Russians turned their Instagram,
Twitter and TikTok accounts into platforms to express their anger
over the jailing of Mr. Navalny. Russia's most effective and
best-known dissident in recent years barely survived what Western
officials say was a poisoning attempt last August and, after
recuperating in Berlin, he was arrested on his return to Moscow in
January. Russian doctors blamed Mr. Navalny's illness on a
metabolic imbalance, akin to a low blood sugar attack.
One student in Yaroslavl, outside the capital, gained national
attention when she filmed herself taking down a schoolroom portrait
of Mr. Putin and posted the clip on TikTok. She was subsequently
questioned by police.
Other protesters noticed that some of their posts were beginning
to disappear. Shortly before one protest on Jan. 23, Nikolai
Shekhirev, a law-school student in the Siberian city of
Nizhnevartovsk, said TikTok deleted two videos he made that
promoted street protests, with no explanation offered.
In another incident, opposition leader Ilya Yashin complained on
Twitter that YouTube had temporarily deleted a link to a voting
strategy the Kremlin's enemies hope to employ to chip away at votes
for the pro-Putin United Russia party. He said a notification he
received from YouTube said the link violated its fraud
guidelines.
Activist news outlet Sota Vision also noticed the same link had
been removed from one of its YouTube posts. After the outlet
complained, the link was made active again.
Another video blogger, Mikhail Petrov, said the sound had been
turned off on a video he posted to TikTok. He had tried to draw
attention to a piece Mr. Navalny's team posted to YouTube that
focused on a Black Sea palace allegedly owned by Mr. Putin. Since
then, he says, he has started censoring himself.
"It's scary," he said.
Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 08, 2021 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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