The Russian communications oversight authority has put Facebook,
Twitter and Google on notice. In May the agency, known by its acronym
Roskomnadzor,
sent a letter to the companies reminding them that they need to comply with the country’s Internet laws.
Roskomnadzor has vast powers: It can summarily order Internet service
providers to shut off access to websites, as it has done with several
independent news and analysis sites; it can levy fines; and it can ask
the prosecutor’s office to launch criminal charges where it perceives a
violation. In the case of foreign companies, it can team up with other
agencies to drive them out of Russia. This is how contemporary Russian
censorship works: by waving the stick of financial consequences.
Back in the Soviet Union, censorship had a straightforward structure:
a centralized agency called Glavlit (Literature Directorate) had
censors posted to newspapers and publishing houses. These people
pre-cleared everything that was slated for publication. All periodicals
and publishing houses belonged to the state then, so ultimately the
editors and the censors worked for the same boss. The system worked
smoothly. But now many media companies are privately owned. Enter
market-based censorship.
Oversight agencies have many restrictive laws at their disposal.
There is the Law for the Protection of Children from Information Harmful
to their Health and Development, passed in 2010 and amended since —
most notably, with the addition of a ban on “propaganda of
homosexuality.” It appears to ban, basically, everything, including “the
naturalistic portrayal or description in any form and by any means of a
person, an animal, or parts of bodies of humans and/or animals, or of
action or inaction, or event, or phenomenon, or its consequences with
the concentration of attention on details, anatomical particulars,
and/or physiological processes.” And that is just one article — no
wonder publishers usually refer to this as the Law for the Protection of
Children from Information, period.
Then there is the ban on something called “extremism.” Many
surprising things can be considered extremist. Last week, for example,
the prosecutor’s office in the southern Russian city of Rostov on the
Don interrogated an organizer of an event called Total Dictation — an
annual opportunity for Russian-speakers to test their spelling skills by
taking dictation simultaneously in groups spread the world over. The
dictation enthusiast, Alexei Pavlovsky, apparently
came under suspicion
because the prosecutor had come across the term “grammar-Nazi,” which
sounded like it might be an extremist movement seeking to kill poor
spellers.
In another instance, a collection of reportage by the journalist
Yelena Kostyuchenko was recently published in Moscow with a number of
pages that were blank save for the phrase “Political censorship” and the
web address where readers could find the chapter excised from the book.
It was Kostyuchenko’s report on an action by the protest art group
Pussy Riot during which the women performed a song called “Putin Has
Pissed Himself.” Roskomnadzor was apparently of the opinion that the
lyrics were “extremist.”
But, in the absence of prior censorship, how would the publisher have
known what the authorities thought of the chapter? Publishing houses
and other media companies have long established the practice of asking
for permission ahead of time. For example, when Russia introduced a law
on “foreign agents” in 2012, the lawyers for the American-owned (and
Congressionally-funded) Radio Liberty sent the Justice Ministry a letter
asking if the radio station might be considered a foreign agent (I know
this because I briefly became director of Radio Liberty a couple of
months later). The Justice Ministry responded with a letter assuring
Radio Liberty that, for technical reasons, it could not be considered a
“foreign agent.” The letter could now be put in reserve as potential
ammunition against future accusations.
But the lawyer’s query had, in effect, amounted to running ahead of
federal agencies in enforcing the law. Publishers do the same with
books, querying Roskomnadzor ahead of time in order to avoid wasting
money of a print run that may have to be pulped. This amounts simply to
prior censorship. It is not as orderly, but it is just as potentially
effective as the Soviet system.
Censorship and laws that restrict speech and assembly serve a single
purpose in a society that is restoring itself to totalitarianism: they
destroy public space. In the modern world, technology-based solutions
soften the blow. People retreat from the square to social networks,
where they can still post slogans and talk to like-minded people, and
this feels much better than the isolation they would have faced in the
past.
But Facebook, Twitter and Google are not public space: they are, in
fact, private companies. Even in a democracy, they are not subject to
freedom-of-assembly or freedom-of-speech laws — but in Russia, they are
most certainly subject to restrictive media laws, as Roskomnadzor has so
helpfully reminded them.
Out of perhaps an overabundance of caution, Facebook also seems
sensitive to non-legal pressure that implies a connection to the
authorities. In the last couple of weeks, the network has removed posts
or entirely blocked the pages of popular Russian opposition bloggers,
including photographer Rustem Adagamov, who was driven into exile three
years ago, and journalist Lena Klimova, who runs an online support
network for LGBT teenagers. Russian bloggers say that this happens in
response to a barrage of complaints that trolls paid by the Kremlin send
to Facebook.
Facebook’s press office did not respond to a request for comment for
this piece, but in an April 22 BuzzFeed News post about Klimova, a
Facebook spokesperson said that the company’s Community Standards
“prevent anyone on Facebook from degrading or shaming another private
individual.”
In his May 14 Q&A session the company’s chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg,
addressed concerns that Facebook was
blocking posts from Ukrainian bloggers, saying that the posts had been removed because they contained hate speech.
Later in May, over 3,000 of people signed an
online petition asking Facebook to stop what they call “political blocking” of Russian bloggers.
So Facebook appears to be considering two letters regarding its
Russian operations for now: one from a large group of concerned citizens
asking the company to stop caving in to pressure from the Kremlin, and
another from the Russian government itself, reminding Facebook that it
can lose its Russian business overnight.
It’s hard to see this as much of a dilemma
source : reuters
