One Down: Instagram Caves To Russian Censorship As All Eyes Turn To YouTube

from the don't-be-evil dept

Fri, Feb 16th 2018 4:23pm — Timothy Geigner

We had just been talking about Instagram and YouTube facing site blocks in Russia all because a billionaire didn't like his dirty laundry exposed online. For brief background, a noted Russian dissident, Alexy Navalny, had published photos of billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko relaxing on a yacht with a young woman variously described as a model and escort fawning over them. Importantly, the salacious nature of the photos and videos is only half of the reason Navalny is drawing attention to them. The other reason is his accusations of corruption in government, as a massively wealthy oligarch consorts in this fashion with a high-ranking member of the federal government. Despite that, or perhaps because of it, Russian courts had handed Deripaska a legal victory and ordered sites hosting the images, including Instagram and YouTube, to take them down. Russia's notoriously corrupt site-blocking agency, Rozcomnadzor, issued an edict that the images be removed or the sites would face a potential full block in Russia.

In that post as well, we posited that American companies should not be assisting authoritarian regimes in political censorship of this sort. Well, it seems that Facebook's Instagram has decided to cave to the censors.

A spokeswoman for Facebook would not discuss the specifics of the case but confirmed that it had decided to comply with Roskomnadzor's demands.

"When governments believe that something on the internet violates their laws, they may contact companies and ask us to restrict access to that content," she said. "We review such requests carefully in light of local laws and where appropriate, we make it unavailable in the relevant country or territory. We are transparent about any content restrictions we make for government requests with local law in our Transparency Report."

Let's be clear about what happened here. A political opponent of the current Russian regime posted embarrassing photos showing both a potentially salacious act with a young woman and, more importantly, a potentially inappropriate relationship between government and a wealthy businessman. Whatever level of transparency Facebook desires to have on this matter, the simple fact is that an American company has chosen to bow to what certainly seems like pure political censorship. Whatever the privacy concerns Deripaska may have raised in court, it should be clear to anyone that similar pictures of some every-day person in Russia would not have been treated with so heavy a hand. This all looks to have been done to avoid political embarrassment above anything else.

And, so, now all eyes turn to Google.

Its response contrasts with that of Google's YouTube service. It had been ordered to block several clips before the end of Wednesday. But it has taken no such action.

Will Google cave as well? If I were to bet on the matter, that seems an outcome at least as likely as any other, but the company certainly shouldn't give into such demands. And, frankly, if any company has the power to get into a staring contest with the Russian government, it's Google. Whether it has the backbone for it remains to be seen, but I would guess there would be far too much backlash over a full block of YouTube in Russia to be worth the government blocking the site in full.

And, again, it's just not a good look to have an American company support this kind of corruption and censorship. It's a shame Facebook couldn't find its stance on the matter, but perhaps Google can do better.

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Filed Under: alexy navalny, censorship, oleg deripaska, rozcomnadzor, russia, sergey prikhodko
Companies: facebook, instagram, youtube

16 Comments

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Anonymous Coward, 16 Feb 2018 @ 5:10pm

Streisand Effect
Instagram blocking the content may increase awareness within Russia even more than (I'm assuming) the court decision did. Scarcity of the removed photos/videos will drive up the perceived value, and I'm sure it still isn't hard to find for the average computer literate Russian, despite the court-ordered blocking and removal of the photos/videos.
Not saying they should or shouldn't have gone along with it, just pointing that out.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 16 Feb 2018 @ 7:48pm

A political opponent of the current Russian regime posted embarrassing photos

I haven't looked to see about which exact photos these are, but frequently they are posted initially by the persons being exposed, or related parties, then discovered out in the open or by using OSInt methods connecting social accounts to particular people. It would not surprise me to see the very same photos still up, in accounts held those on the side of power. They are brazen mofos.
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PaulT (profile), 17 Feb 2018 @ 3:23am

Re: Streisand Effect
That's likely, but the issue here is really not about the content in this case, but Russia's willingness to block entire sites on a whim. That's bound to have a chilling effect on whatever remnants of free speech they have left.
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Anonymous Coward, 17 Feb 2018 @ 6:17am

out_of_the_blue's heroes, ladies and gentlemen - big corporations and government in bed together!
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Richard (profile), 17 Feb 2018 @ 7:07am

If this is about the politician
If this is about the politician then it is not really news.

He is in the footsteps of of George Osborne

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7693241.stm

and Peter Mandelson

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7690459.stm

The fact is that Deripaska seems to have entertained a large proportion of Europe's politicians at some time or other.
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Guest, 17 Feb 2018 @ 7:38am

Re:
In fact, the photos and videos were posted by the model that accompanied Deripaska on his yacht, her (nick)name is Nastya Rybka. She posted them on her Instagram account, and they were publicly accessible from the very beginning.

Navalny drew audience's attention to those photos and discovered the connection between people involved in this case.
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Guest, 17 Feb 2018 @ 7:39am

Re: If this is about the politician
Please refer to a translated version of Navalny's video (there is one) to find out more.
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Guest, 17 Feb 2018 @ 7:44am

> Rozcomnadzor

It is actually called Roscomnadzor or Roskomnadzor. Definitely not "Roz". Here "Ros" (Рос) is short for "Rossia" (Россия), "com" or "kom" (ком) is short for "kommunikatsia" (коммуникация – communication) and "nadzor" (надзор) means "supervision".
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Davelaw (profile), 17 Feb 2018 @ 1:35pm

These companies do not exist in a vacuum. The article states that Facebook simply geo fenced access to the content to comply with a court order of that country. That is exactly what many other U.S. websites do in similar situations, as they should. Indeed, Google does that in response to the European right to be forgotten, which is the proper way to handle it, versus the way CNIL wants it done, which expects worldwide takedown. While these websites might be immune from liability in the United States, that does not necessarily immunize thier operations outside the United States. If the people of France, Russia, Europe or any other territory don’t like what their laws or how Courts are acting, it’s up to them to change the laws in those countries. In any event, doesn’t give US companies the right to unilaterally ignore the law within those countries.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 17 Feb 2018 @ 2:22pm

Re: Re:
Yeah, i ran across the exact story later yesterday. Interesting how the whole thing started.

I guess Rozcomnadzor is going to have to burn Rybka's book as well.
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orbitalinsertion (profile), 17 Feb 2018 @ 2:24pm

Re:
Who suggested ignoring laws (or rulings, which is what this is), whether they are good or complete crap?
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Davelaw (profile), 17 Feb 2018 @ 7:32pm

Re: Re:
Saying that Facebook “caved” suggests that they had a choice, either ignore the ruling or abide by it. At least they limited their response to taking it down only the territory within that court’s jurisdiction. What If this “crap” order came from a U.K. or French court that found content to be defamatory under that country’s laws even though no U.S. court would have done so? Would Facebook be “caving” if it took down the content from publication only in those countries? No. It happens just like that thousands if not tens of thousands of times every day.
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Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 17 Feb 2018 @ 11:29pm

... it's just not a good look to have an American company support this kind of corruption and censorship
So what kind of corruption and censorship do you think they should support?
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Ninja (profile), 19 Feb 2018 @ 7:11am

I've searched for "Facebook spine" on Google and it returned no results. There, I did it.
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Anonymous Coward, 20 Feb 2018 @ 10:24am

Will Google cave?

Depends. They could, taking what little backlash there will be from those in the know, but not much else.

Or they could say no, and then take on whatever Russia does. Which, could be real interesting to watch.

My money is on the one that causes Google to lose the least amount of money.
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