The Russian government took steps Friday to further limit what its citizens can see in media and on the internet: “slowing” access to Facebook and ordering state and independent outlets to use only governmental sources in their reporting on Ukraine.
Russia will “partially restrict access in the form of slowing down traffic” to the social-media platform, Russia’s telecommunications agency said, in response to Facebook’s own “restricting” of four state-owned media sites: the Zvezda TV channel, the RIA Novosti news agency, and the Lenta.ru and Gazeta.ru Internet sites.
Nick Clegg, vice president of global affairs at Facebook’s parent company Meta, tweeted on Friday, “Yesterday, Russian authorities ordered us to stop the independent fact checking and labeling of contact posted on Facebook by Russian state-owned media organizations. We refused. As a result, they have announced they will be restricting the use of our services.”
The agency, Roskomnadzor, also told the country’s official and private-sector media outlets on Friday that ”they are obliged to use information and data received by them only from official Russian sources” when talking or writing about “a special operation in connection with the situation in the LPR and DPR”—that is, Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Russian rulers have for centuries sought to restrict public knowledge and discussion, reaching a censorious peak under the Soviet Union that Vladimir Putin has sought to recapture. Last year, a Freedom House report said, “Although the constitution provides for freedom of speech, vague laws on extremism grant the authorities great discretion to crack down on any speech, organization, or activity that lacks official support.” The report added, “The government controls, directly or through state-owned companies and friendly business magnates, all of the national television networks and many radio and print outlets, as well as most of the media advertising market.”
Since 2017, the Kremlin has also worked to control what Russians can see on the internet, developing gear to silence websites, block content, and even shut off the country’s online connections to the rest of the world. Officials also use non-technical means. Last year, Russia made 700,000 requests to Google items to restrict search results, according to Vasily Gastov, a visiting fellow with the USC Annenberg Center. “At present, Google agrees with about one fifth of requests,” he said.
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