Roskomnadzor, Russia's telecommunications watchdog, has fined Google 68 million rubles (roughly $1.2 million) for helping spread what it called "unreliable" information on the war in Ukraine and the failure to remove it from its platforms.
The Russian telecommunications regulator said Google's YouTube online video sharing platform "purposefully contributes" to spreading inaccurate info on Russia's war in Ukraine, thus defaming Russia's army.
Per Roskomnadzor's count, at the moment, YouTube is hosting more than 7,000 materials that also promote what the telecom watchdog considers illegal, including ones promoting extremist views, indifference to the life and health of minors, and calls for protests.
"Google LLC and its information resources have been repeatedly brought to administrative responsibility for violation of Russian legislation in terms of failure to remove prohibited information. For this, Google LLC was fined a total of 68 million rubles," Roskomnadzor said.
Google now also risks a revenue-based fine as high as 10% of its annual Russian turnover for repeatedly failing to restrict access to materials containing information prohibited in Russia.
Russian bailiffs had preciously seized 7.22 billion rubles (roughly $133 million) from Google's accounts in May for repeatedly refusing to delete content banned in Russia, according to an order issued by the Tagansky Court of Moscow on December 24, 2021.
Google's Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy on June 16, according to documents filed with Moscow's Arbitration Court after its accounts were frozen, per Interfax.
Google's free services will remain accessible
While Google Russia's operation has been made impossible, the company added that its free services (including Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and Google Play) would remain accessible in Russia.
In March, Roskomnadzor also banned Alphabet's news aggregator service Google News and blocked access to its news.google.com domain for providing access to "unreliable information" on the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The decision followed Russian President Vladimir Putin signing into law new legislation that makes it illegal to spread "knowingly fake news" about Russia's war in Ukraine and introducing jail terms of up to 15 years.
The same month, the telecom regulator asked Google to stop ad campaigns spreading misinformation regarding Russia's invasion of Ukraine on YouTube videos.
In response, Google took action against disinformation campaigns about Russia's invasion and blocked the YouTube channels of Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in Europe at the request of the European Union.
Roskomnadzor later protested YouTube's decision, demanding the immediate removal of all restrictions on the official accounts of Russian media (including Sputnik and RT) across Europe.
Comments
GT500 - 1 year ago
Thank you Russia for reiterating for the entire world why it isn't safe to allow governments to regulate news.
TairikuOkami - 1 year ago
"Thank you Russia for reiterating for the entire world why it isn't safe to allow governments to regulate news."
Like EU and US are doing for decades.
LittleDickPutin - 1 year ago
""Thank you Russia for reiterating for the entire world why it isn't safe to allow governments to regulate news."
Like EU and US are doing for decades."
I am thinking your not from around here?
Regardless of how bad it is now in the US, I can still go out on a street with a sign, post online, or take out an ad to say Putin is a dyeing cripple, or Xi Jinping is a little dick leader. And do it all day and night without disappearing.
Can you say the same?
EndangeredPootisBird - 1 year ago
Unless youre talking to an right wing or religious extremist, expressing your freedom of speech in the US or EU wont get you killed.
We are seeing how the US and EU are turning into theocratical dictatorships where the only people who are allowed to have an opinion is the religious (White Christians for US and Poland, Muslims for Sweden), which has only been made worse thanks to social media disinformation and propaganda by rogue state groups, disinformation and propaganda that almost caused white supremacists and neo-nazis to overthrow the US government.
GT500 - 1 year ago
"Like EU and US are doing for decades."
That's definitely a problem in the EU and USA as well, despite the fact that in the USA the first amendment to the Constitution is supposed to protect the "freedom of the press". People will justify this sort of regulation by saying "children shouldn't be exposed to certain things", or "certain things are offensive/racist/sexist/etc", or "we have to protect people from fake news" and thus governments keep passing more and more laws to restrict news and free speech. Doing it slowly like this over the course of many decades is a more effective system of regulation, as people don't realize what's happening until "freedom of the press" is completely gone (and the majority may not even realize it then). The way Russia is doing it makes it more obvious that this sort of regulation is a very bad thing.
TsofT - 1 year ago
Honest question: If you don't participate in the world order can you still claim violations against the world order rules?
GT500 - 1 year ago
Do you mean if one country isn't a member of the United Nations, can they still charge another nation with violating UN rules? I doubt a non-UN member would be able to file any formal charges with the UN against a member nation, however it might be possible for a non-member to report actions taken by member nations to bring it to the attention of the UN. As for whether or not the UN would actually care, that's another matter entirely, and is probably based more on politics than anything else.
herbman - 1 year ago
The main stream media NEVER EVER TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ANYTHING . They alter , delete , edit , omit and add wording to fit their narratives 100% of the time and have been doing that for decades .
A small example of main stream media sources below , all listed names are guilty of it and can NEVER be trusted.
Cnn, Msnbc, Abc, Cbs, Nbc, HuffPost, NYT, WashPost, The AP, BuzzFeed, Politico, NewsWeek, The Hill, Rolling Stone, Sky News, Mediate, The Atlantic, USA Today, Time magazine, LA Times, Politifact, Reuters, BBC, Wikipedia, Boston Globe, Vox, The Miami Herald, Mother Jones, Factcheck .or, HLN , Yahoo, MSN, NY Daily News, Vice, Univision, People magazine, PBS, NPR, New Yorker, Wall Street Journal, Daily Beast, Bloomberg, Aurn, National Journal, BI ,
It's very very very difficult to find factual information these days since all search engines only link to propaganda sources .
Try searching for political info on Google and other main stream search engines for instance , the ONLY links they will show you are from the above sources . Twitter and Facebook will also ONLY link to the above sources .
99.9% of all factcheckers are liberal owned and funded as well and their sole purpose is to confirm the lies that the above sources report . It fools a lot of people because they truly believe factcheckers are legit factcheckers but nothing could be further from the truth .
By far the best way to know with 100% certainty what's factual info is to seek out what the above listed sources insist is disinformation because what they claim is disinformation and not trustworthy is ALWAYS 100% trustworthy .
What the above sources promote as real news IS NEVER EVER real news .
buddy215 - 1 year ago
It must of been a horrible experience for you to witness all the Republicans criticizing and blaming Trump for his illegal actions in his attempted coup. But then again....it is likely you never tuned in or read anything about the hearings as most Trump rabid fans avoided them like the plague.