Twitter Caves to Vladimir Putin, Censors Content Within
Russia
Appeasing the dictator, 140 characters at a time.
By KIM ZIGFELD
Bio
March 27, 2013 - 12:03 am
If you have been following the Internet crackdown
underway in Russia, you will not be surprised to learn that Vladimir Putin’s
Kremlin has recruited many websites — which are either terrified of his wrath
or interested in currying his favor — to help crush and eradicate criticism of
his government online.
However, you may be surprised to learn that one of those
websites is Twitter.
The Moscow Times reported last week that — according to
the Kremlin itself — for the past several weeks Twitter has been blocking
Russian access to any tweets designated by the Kremlin as “extremist.” Twitter
has also deleted at least one user account at the Kremlin’s request.
On its applicable agency website (known by its acronym
Roskomnadzor), the Kremlin praises Twitter’s management team for its
“constructive position” in reconfiguring its website in a manner “acceptable to
Russian side.”
Here is the full Kremlin statement, via Russian wire
service Interfax:
Negotiations on cooperation with the largest
international Internet social platform as part of maintaining the register of
information whose dissemination is banned in Russia had been held since the
moment the first entries appeared in the register with references to those
tweets. The administration of Twitter had had no practice of interaction with
foreign governmental bodies on the removal or restriction of illegal content,
and this made the negotiations difficult. The constructive position of the
administration of the resource made it possible to formulate a mutually
acceptable interaction algorithm that makes it possible to have information
from the register processed within periods acceptable to the Russian side.
The agency has already blacklisted over 600 Russian
websites, including a wiki and a digital library.
This same Kremlin agency is being sued by YouTube because
of similar demands the agency tried to place on that subsidiary of Google,
restrictions that prevented YouTube from displaying material that was clearly
for entertainment purposes.
The zeal of Russian regulators goes far beyond that;
then-president Dmitri Medvedev has even fallen afoul of the censors.
While Google is apparently fighting back, Twitter has
taken a very different approach: under-the-radar appeasement. Had the Kremlin
not boasted about its ability to push Twitter around, we might still not be
aware of what Twitter is currently doing.
However, Twitter has, in fact, previously mentioned its
ability to cater to a country’s censorship. In January 2012 — in a blog post
ironically titled “Tweets still must flow” — Twitter announced:
We give ourselves the ability to reactively withhold
content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the
rest of the world. We have also built in a way to communicate transparently to
users when content is withheld, and why.
Interestingly, in June 2010 Twitter execs gushed about a
visit by sham “president” Dmitri Medvedev to their world headquarters. They
said they were “honored,” and he was “incredibly generous.” Two years later,
Medvedev acknowledged his presidency was a fraud, and handed Vladimir Putin
unchecked power for life.
There should not be any doubt that this system of
neo-Soviet censorship will be used against Putin’s political rivals. Consider
the case of Russian parliament member Dmitry Gudkov: for criticizing Putin,
Gudkov was first forced out of his party block in the legislature. Then, for
visiting the United States and speaking out, he was accused of treason and
threatened with imprisonment. If the Kremlin will openly attack a prominent
member of the legislature in this manner, imagine how far it will go to crush
an obscure microblogger.
The Kremlin is following a neo-Soviet strategy: It
initially couches its restrictive provisions in terms of “protecting children
from abuse” and “pursuing terrorist activity,” but the measures are always
couched in language that is carefully crafted so that the law can be expanded
to include any activity that undermines Putin’s authority.
To be clear: the vast majority of Russians will have no
problem with Twitter’s censorship, because polling clearly showing the vast
majority of Russians believe in censorship. The notion, advanced during the
Cold War, that all Russians felt victimized by their totalitarian state was
simply not true. There are wide, deep currents of support for repression.
And who can blame them, if the freedom-loving West won’t
take the lead? If a massive organization like Twitter, one of the most powerful
websites on the planet, is going to simply roll over for the Kremlin, then the
Kremlin will conclude it can readily move forward. Its ultimate goal will be to
block any content it disagrees with, just as was the case in Soviet times.
As such, Twitter’s conduct is reprehensible. If Russians
who do oppose the regime cannot look to American organizations for support,
it’s inevitable that they will lose hope and stop resisting as Putin seeks to
create a neo-Soviet dictatorship.
Such resistance is important to Americans, not just
Russian citizens. As Leon Aron of the American Enterprise Institute has
recently shown, Putin is not just seeking to recreate a Soviet state on the
domestic front; his foreign policy is just as determined to reestablish the
Soviet empire. Russia’s foreign policy interests are diametrically opposed to
those of the U.S.: Putin wants high oil prices, so he wants instability in the
Middle East; we want low prices and stable democracies. If Putin wins total
control over his domestic front, he will be free to turn all his energies to
supporting rogue regimes in Egypt, Libya, and Syria.
It’s also important simply for moral reasons. America is
the world’s great beacon of hope, the one nation that can be trusted to stand
up for freedom and liberty even in the darkest hours. An online petition has
been created to pressure Twitter — sign it, and let Twitter know that enabling
an anti-American dictatorship is not acceptable.
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