by Juliana Kenny in Media Tech, Personal Tech.
Russian government officials dubbed the temporary blacklisting of social media network Vkontakte (VK) an accident, but its several-hour-long outage on May 24 has reinvigorated the debate on internet censorship and differing world views on what should be made available to the public on the web.
With 200 million users, VK is Russia’s most popular social network – yes, more popular than Facebook. Reports note that it has become a forum for opponents of President Vladimir Putin, which has sparked probes into its operation. In April, officials searched the St. Petersburg home of VK’s founder Pavel Durov, stating the search involved an incident with an injured traffic policeman. Despite this claim, many related the probe to Durov’s refusal to comply with an order by the Federal Security Service to close VK groups used to organize protests against Putin’s election in December 2011. The investigation led to Durov’s fleeing the country. The probe also coincided with the government’s heightened aggression to block public access to certain websites – a move Google has taken issue with as some YouTube videos made the list.
But these site blackouts are extensions of a broad law enacted in November 2012 giving the Russian government power to blacklist websites deemed harmful to children. Many of the faulted sites have stemmed from social media, sparking outcry that this measure is simply another in Putin’s arsenal of repressing political dissent. VK was “mistakenly” placed on the list – hence its removal some hours later, but the site had effectively been blocked from distributing content for enough time for users to become irate. Vladimir Pikov, spokesman for the country’s internet monitoring body known as Roskomnadzor, stated in a report that the site’s blockage was a product of human error.
On a broader scale, VK’s brief blackout mirrors a rift in world attitudes towards internet censorship. Russia is part of a group of countries favoring active censorship including Egypt, North Korea, China, and Iran, among others, – all of whom made their voices known at the World Conference on International Telecommunications in Dubai in December 2012 when proposing that national governments take control of managing internet usage. A universal law failed to gain approval as the U.S. and European countries favored a “free” internet, but the issue has not subsided after the stalemate in Dubai. China’s regular removal of social media profiles belonging to political opponents against its ruling Communist Party is one signifier of the persistence of government control over the internet. Russia’s accidental blockage of VK is another in what will surely be an ongoing debate.
http://blogs.blouinnews.com/blouinbeattechnology/2013/05/24/russian-social-network-blackout-spotlights-internet-censorship/