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Russia Wants To Ban Social Media Sites Discriminating Against Russian News Outlets (zdnet.com) 34

The Russian government is working on a new law to block foreign social media sites inside Russia's territory as repercussions for "discriminating" against Russian news outlets operating abroad. From a report: Sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are specifically mentioned in "explanatory notes" (Word document) accompanying the new draft bill, submitted last week for debate in the Russian Duma (state parliament). Russian lawmakers say that since April 2020, state authorities had received complaints from editors of Russian news sites that had their social media accounts censored on the aforementioned sites. "Media outlets such as Russia Today, RIA Novosti, Crimea 24 were censored. In total, about 20 acts of discrimination were recorded," Russian lawmakers said. The acts of discrimination referenced in the draft bill's notes refers to rules introduced at Twitter and Facebook this year, and at YouTube in 2018. The three sites have been showing special labels on the profiles of state-affiliated news agencies and have been reducing their visibility on their sites by removing their content from recommendation algorithms.
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Russia Wants To Ban Social Media Sites Discriminating Against Russian News Outlets

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  • Forget the quote

  • by buravirgil ( 137856 ) <buravirgil@gmail.com> on Thursday November 26, 2020 @05:45PM (#60768760)
    The complaint from western platforms is their advertisers don't want to be associated with content steeped in cultural values or habits disparate from their audience, but these platforms have enjoyed a decade and more of acquisition growth intended to reduce competition. Some of those headline making acquisitions were speculative and predatory in character.

    Were competition greater, sales executives would not need to hide behind algorithms to assure sponsors of greater returns and branding strategies. Secret sauces are snake oil in an artificially static marketplace.

    But I am no suggesting breaking up these MySpace to be titans: I merely suggest Channels. International channels perhaps designated by a little flag in the corner of a screen that are a trivial convention to content management-- it was one of YouTube's first changes.

    So, only for illustration: Russia.
    Russia has experienced a near diaspora over the last generation-- I refuse to believe if a Russian channel/section of any platform going were transparently identified, the same references to habits or values that western companies seek to shield from a captured audience that could be potentially alienated will not result in a finer segmentation of potential ad spaces.
  • by kot-begemot-uk ( 6104030 ) on Thursday November 26, 2020 @05:58PM (#60768786) Homepage
    The law specifies a ladder of fines applicable for open discrimination against Russian origin and language sources.

    1. Banning is the last resort.

    2. Prior to that are fines and bandwidth throttling both of which are much more effective.

    3. It was not the banning or labelling of RT, Russia 24 or any of the other sites mentioned in the post which brought it. Some terminal dumbf*ck listened to clueless idiots from the whorehouse on our payroll usually referred to as "opposition" (it is not, they have real one, these are just the idiots we pimp). They delisted and tried to ban Solovyev's show. No amount of discrimination against Russian state media could bring the level of fury across the full political spectrum there which resulted from this because:

    3.1. While vehemently nationalistic and quite biased, he ALWAYS invites alternative points of view and you can see Polish, American and even Ukrainian representation regularly on his show. Further to this, you can even see our ambassadors and high ranked embassy officials on it. It's ratings in the post-USSR space are such that you do not decline an invite as it gives you a platform which nothing else can provide. He always gave us the option to answer (compare that to how often you see the Russian ambassador on any of our news talk shows).

    3.2. He is the head of the journalist union. You really do not want to f*ck with the guy who will mobilise the opposition against you. Whichever dumbf*ck in Langley and/or Albert Embankment authorized it, needs to be sacked.

    In any case, the deed is done. The end result will be that we will lose all of our means to promote whatever interesting biases and delusions (such as Navalny being an uberoppositionfuhrer) we want to promote there. They also get to protectionist protect the move of their content to VK and Yandex killing any market share which Google and Co have clawed from them over the last decade.

    Dumb. Dumber. Dumberer.

    • There isn't much difference between Google and Yandex. Yandex is a Dutch company.
    • While vehemently nationalistic and quite biased, he ALWAYS invites alternative points of view and you can see Polish, American and even Ukrainian representation regularly on his show. ...

      Dumb. Dumber. Dumberer.

      Only a complete moron would find that substantive. In fact, I already asked somebody who looked like you and he agreed you're an idiot. Makes sense, right?

      The end result will be that we will lose all of our means to promote whatever interesting biases and delusions ([stumping for Puti-Put redaced]) we want to promote there.

      So you're saying they're stabbing themselves in the face, because it becomes harder for you to be a useful idiot?

      No, it doesn't make it any harder, you're stumping for Putin on American sites, so you're still just as useful, and just as much of an idiot.

  • Fair's fair (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ghoul ( 157158 )
    If the Social Media outlets want to become Editors instead of a communication medium than they will be treated as state sponsored media like BBC and CNN (yeah I know technically its private but everyone's wife or husband works at the CIA or state department) and state sponsored media always work under restrictions.
  • by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 ) on Thursday November 26, 2020 @08:06PM (#60769062)

    ... social media bans you -- oh, wait ...

  • by marcle ( 1575627 ) on Thursday November 26, 2020 @09:48PM (#60769268)

    will not be fought on land or sea, nor in space, nor by cyber espionage. It will be fought on the battleground of social media.

  • Occupied territory (Score:2, Interesting)

    by teg ( 97890 )

    At least one of them, Crimea 24, seems to be based in the occupied Ukrainian territory of Crimea. [usmission.gov]. That businesses operating in occupied foreign territories face sanctions can't be that surprising, that Russia continues to fuel war in the area and even shot down a Dutch civilian airplane [bbc.com] doesn't make that bit easier.

  • Now let's take the next step and put the entire country and it's state sponsored hacking operations behind a new Digital Iron Curtain. Do China too, while you're at it, and that'll cut off North Korean hackers.

  • by jellomizer ( 103300 ) on Friday November 27, 2020 @12:50PM (#60770530)

    If you want News on America Turn to BBC or Aljazeera. (Not their American counterparts) Because much of what they are reporting isn't tied to some Party Loyalty or attempt to keep a particular type of American Demographics hooked on their station.

    If you are from the UK. I expect you have a lot of Anxiety around Brixit and Johnson. But for us Americans, while we may have an opinion on it, we don't have the same level of Anxiety around it, and are able process the events much more objectively. Because it is your problem, not ours.

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