Facebook, Alphabet set to impose heavy fines on Russian content

Companies refusing to remove content known to be illegal in Russia could soon face a revision of 5% to 20% of their annual local revenue, federal communications watchdog Roskomnadzor said in an email on Monday.

“For many companies that have systematically refused to comply with the legal demands of the agency, the issue of fines on revenue is being considered in the near future,” the press service said. It will also consider other means of enforcement, it said.

Russia has stepped up pressure on foreign technology companies this year amid widespread crackdown on anti-Kremlin protests. Last week, Apple Inc and Alphabet’s Google pressed for the removal of an app called Smart Voting, designed to help protesters vote for politicians from the ruling party, when officials attacked them in parliamentary elections. accused of interfering.

Since the arrest in January of opposition leader Alexei Navalny following his return to Russia, the government has moved aggressively to block access to information. Many independent media outlets have been tagged as “foreign agents” and have been forced to discontinue or conform to reporting requirements.

While the election has acted as a catalyst for recent action, the government’s recent measures are a continuation of a years-long effort to restrict online access to information in the country.

According to Human Rights Watch, a series of laws and regulations introduced between 2018 and 2019 expanded the ability of Russian authorities to automatically filter Internet content. The government requires Internet service providers to install tools that can block websites, and it has also sought to restrict citizens’ access to virtual private networks, which are designed to prevent censorship and protect online anonymity. are used for.

In March, President Vladimir Putin said in a speech that “society will collapse from the inside” as long as the Internet “follows not only the formal, legal rules of law, but also the moral laws of the society in which we live.” live.” Meanwhile, Russian courts have repeatedly this year issued fines to foreign technology companies for not removing content.

According to Roskomnadzor, so far this year, Facebook has been charged 66 million rubles ($900,000), Twitter 38.4 million rubles and Google 26 million rubles.

Russia’s demand to remove content from Google websites has grown rapidly in recent years. According to Google’s Transparency Report, in 2015 the company received requests to remove less than 5,000 items from its websites. By 2020, that number had grown to over 340,000.

Both Google and Apple have also been fined for other violations. In April, Russian officials ordered Apple to pay $12 million for allegedly breaking monopoly laws. Meanwhile, in July Google was ordered to pay a fine of 3 million rubles for refusing to store personal data of Russians on servers in the country. LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft Corp, has been blocked in Russia since 2016 for refusing to store user data locally.

Twitter has previously been hit by measures that were slow to load by failing to remove content, while Roskomnadzor this month “prohibited” information access to some of the world’s most popular such services. including six virtual private network providers. Resource.

Ahead of the parliamentary election this month, the pressure on US tech companies had increased significantly. In August, Google and Apple were ordered to remove the smart voting app from their App Stores, which they did last week. A Google close said officials threatened to jail its local employees if they did not do so. According to Russian news agency Interfax, Google and Russian search engine Yandex were ordered to blacklist the phrase “smart voting” in separate search results.

Amid the crackdown, Putin’s ruling party maintained a parliamentary majority of more than two-thirds in last weekend’s elections, with opponents alleging widespread fraud. Navalny’s political organization was labeled extremist and disbanded, while many of his associates have fled the country amid the threat of criminal prosecution.

Roman Borisovich, a former Russian insurance executive who helped finance Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation, said he expects the situation to continue to spiral as Russian officials exercise more control over foreign technology companies.

“They may have to close their business in Russia or move people out of the country,” he said. “The regime is not going back to the quasi-democratic process of cooperating with the opposition. This is an all-out war.”