Russia Steps Up Pressure on Google, Meta With Record Fines (bloomberg.com) 57
A Russian court fined Alphabet's Google 7.2 billion rubles ($98 million) and Meta Platforms 2 billion rubles Friday for failing to remove banned content, the largest such penalties yet, as the authorities escalate a crackdown on foreign technology companies. From a report: The fines were due to the companies' repeated failure to comply with orders to take down content and based on a percentage of their annual earnings in Russia, the federal communications watchdog said in a statement. Google and Meta could face more fines if they don't remove the material, it said.
Google is studying the ruling and then will determine its next steps, the company's press service in Moscow said in a statement. Russia has stepped up its confrontation with foreign social media and internet companies this year in what the government calls a campaign to uphold its digital sovereignty. Regulators have levied fines and slowed content in a bid to force companies including Google and Twitter to delete posts encouraging unauthorized protests and other material deemed illegal.
Google is studying the ruling and then will determine its next steps, the company's press service in Moscow said in a statement. Russia has stepped up its confrontation with foreign social media and internet companies this year in what the government calls a campaign to uphold its digital sovereignty. Regulators have levied fines and slowed content in a bid to force companies including Google and Twitter to delete posts encouraging unauthorized protests and other material deemed illegal.
Facebook/Meta (Score:3)
Facebook has a good PR firm helping them to rebrand to Meta in order to deflect all the negative publicity they were getting. It seems to have worked.
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Being fined by Russia for refusing to censor content is bad publicity?
Were you hiding under a rock when they copped all the that flak from US politicians of all colors for banning stuff in the USA, even though it was with a far lighter touch than Russia is demanding here.
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Being fined by Russia for refusing to censor content is bad publicity?
Meta was fined more lightly than Google.
flak from US politicians of all colors for banning stuff in the USA
Red politicians were mad about the bans.
Blue politicians wanted more stuff banned.
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Red, blue... they just want different stuff banned.
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Red is also very upright about all things related to sex, remember - they occasionally launch (ineffectual) campaigns to ban obscene material, and to broaden the definition of same. They are even the ones mostly responsible for the FCC banning naughty words on television.
In Biden's America (Score:2, Troll)
Facebook censors . . . you!
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YUP, it sure as hell worked much better than Google's attempt! erm, I mean... Alphabet.
I understand Russia's pique (Score:5, Funny)
After all, if they both bend over for China, what's this business of being picky with Russia?. Sheer discrimination that's what it is.
Re:I understand Russia's pique (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, on one hand China is the second largest economy in the world run by cunts.
And on the other, Russia is an irrelevant backwater full of cunts.
They're picky with Russia because Russia just doesn't matter. They can take it or leave it. China on the other hand matters from a growth PoV.
Re:I understand Russia's pique (Score:4, Interesting)
They're picky with Russia because Russia just doesn't matter. They can take it or leave it.
You think so?
Russia was in the G8 before they made it the G7 for political reasons, and it has a population of almost 150 mio. people. That's a pretty nice market. Larger than any european country by population, and almost half of the USA.
The real reason they're not so invested there is that for them it's a tough market with - omg! - competition. There's Yandex and VK and a bunch of other Russian companies, and they are strong. For example, Google and Yandex have almost equal market shares (https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/russian-federation) while VK utterly destroys its competition (https://www.statista.com/statistics/284447/russia-social-network-penetration/) with Instagram, Twitter and Facebook put together not even approaching it.
Another concern for these companies is probably not even Russia itself, but the fact that millions of mostly wealthy and upper middle class Russians live abroad - and they take these with them. My wife is Russian, she came to Europe for her PhD. She has more friends on VK than on Facebook despite living here for almost ten years. She still searches on Yandex, not on Google. (and Yandex's video site instead of YouTube). All her friends in the Russian community here do the same.
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You're thinking of some other Russia, maybe from the 70s. Last time I visited the country, there was free Wifi in the city center and everyone I saw walking around had a smartphone.
I'm sure some nomads in Siberia don't have Internet. But that's not what we're talking about, right?
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For someone with a Russian wife, you really have the blinkers on over the reality of Russia.
For someone who evaded the question of whether he's actually ever been there, you sure claim to know a lot.
The problem is that outside those cushy big cities they've seen Russia has a LOT of territory, and if you live in it, providing you with such things is not commercially viable, and the chance of state funding getting those services to you without it being pilfered by corrupt leaders is basically zero.
Yes, Russia is HUGE. There's lots of lands where there's essentially nothing. Going by train for two days straight is a pretty normal thing there. Sleeper cars, which are an oddity here in Europe, are the norm in some regions of Russia.
So yes, putting cables into the ground isn't viable there. But strangely, my mother-in-law lived in Siberia until recently and she had excellent Internet - mobile phones
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> Russia was in the G8 before they made it the G7 for political reasons
You've got that ass backwards, you need to read up on Russia's presence in the G8. Russia was in the G8 _for_ political reasons. It wasn't in it because it was a leading developed economy which is what the G7/G8 was for, it was in it because the West was appeasing them in letting them make themselves look like they're part of the big boys club to keep Putin happy. Russia was never in the G8 because it was a leading developed economy,
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First of all, as other post in this thread has pointed, it is a top-10 economy.
Second, as proven by the blowback from our own support for antivaxxer operations in Russia (40/40, Mashkova Blagih, Shukshina, etc) it is not just Russian which read Russian. Sure, it was a cute idea to wage biological warfare via a social media backdoor. We love killing ruskies after all. But damn... why as a result it hit half of Eastern Europe? Was the creation of a anti-vaccine rattlesnake nest there
Re:I understand Russia's pique (Score:5, Informative)
After all, if they both bend over for China, what's this business of being picky with Russia?. Sheer discrimination that's what it is.
Do they bend over for China? I don't know about FB, but Google does very, very little for/with China. AFAICT the only transactions Google has engaged in with China for several years are a few smallish deals with Chinese companies. No significant Google services are available in China, precisely because Google refuses to comply with Chinese censorship demands.
Re:thats fucking Hilarious (Score:1)
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When you're in a foreign country, you follow their rules.
or you leave and take your ball with you.
Block all Google or Meta connections to or from russian IPs
Then see how long the fines last
Re:As it should be (Score:4, Interesting)
or you leave and take your ball with you.
Block all Google or Meta connections to or from russian IPs
Then see how long the fines last
Russia wouldn't even flinch.
Google's search engine market share in Russia is just 50% and Yandex (it's main competitor) would take that over within 24 hours if Google were to shut down operations in the country (https://gs.statcounter.com/search-engine-market-share/all/russian-federation)
Yandex also has a video platform comparable to YouTube (plus lots of full-length movies, often in English, just in case your favorite Torrent site doesn't have something you're looking for...) and equivalents for most of the other Google stuff.
Meanwhile, FB doesn't even matter. Russia (both the country and its population) wouldn't even notice if they disappeared. Their activity, compared to the Russian equivalent VK, is miniscule (https://www.statista.com/statistics/284447/russia-social-network-penetration/).
Sorry to burst your American Grandiosity Complex, but neither Google nor FB have anything to threaten Russia with.
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Because even with all the troubles and fees, they are still making money.
It really is that simple. Corporations exist to make money. As long as they do, you can ass-rape them and insult their mother, they'll be happy to do business with you. Well, maybe not happy, but they'll do business with you.
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When you're in a foreign country, you follow their rules.
Correct. And since this is user contributed content, and neither Google nor Facebook wish to enforce editorial review of all such posted content before it is seen by others, the only viable answer is to leave the country, and remove the staff in the country so that they cannot be held in threat of being hostages again (as both Apple and Google staff were with the election app).
Good bye Russia.
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When you're in a foreign country, you follow their rules.
In one sense I agree. Companies must obey laws.
But in a more important sense, your comment seems to legitimize the Russian censorship demands that are at issue here. Personally, I'd prefer that Google and FB take a principled stand and refuse to comply, even if that means exiting Russia.
Re:As it should be (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally, I'd prefer that Google and FB take a principled stand and refuse to comply, even if that means exiting Russia.
international corporations don't have principles.
Their PR department has advised them that taking a stand will improve their image in western countries, where their market share and profits are larger. This discussion here, where some are applauding companies we otherwise universally loathe, proves them right.
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international corporations don't have principles.
The people who make them up do though. (Sometimes they are inconsistent about it, and sometimes they are crazy principles, like promoting transgenderism or influencing elections or whatever, but they are principles.)
Their PR department has advised them that taking a stand will improve their image in western countries, where their market share and profits are larger. This discussion here, where some are applauding companies we otherwise universally loathe, proves them right.
May or may not be true, but irrelevant. Sorry, my discern-other-people's-hearts-o-meter is broken. I'm gonna applaud what I think is good.
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Personally, I'd prefer that Google and FB take a principled stand and refuse to comply, even if that means exiting Russia.
international corporations don't have principles.
Their PR department has advised them that taking a stand will improve their image in western countries, where their market share and profits are larger. This discussion here, where some are applauding companies we otherwise universally loathe, proves them right.
Then why not simply let it go if it's that small of a market?
One thing I learned quick running a small business was to recognise toxic customers and dump them fast. It's not worth an hour of my time to placate an arsehole who may be worth... maybe $1000 in revenue. Refund, take his shit back and sell it to someone worth my time because once you bend over for toxic customers, they'll never let you get up again.
Which makes me think, pushing out Google, FB, et al. is exactly what the Russians are trying
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Then why not simply let it go if it's that small of a market?
Because it's not a small market. It is still making them a profit. But in this particular moment, taking a beating there vs. improving your image in dozens of western countries where anti-russian sentiments are becoming popular again results in prefering to suffer that damage in that market for this gain in this market.
It's not worth an hour of my time to placate an arsehole who may be worth... maybe $1000 in revenue.
That's you as a small business owner. If you were running a multinational corporation, you would compare that revenue to how much it costs you in salaries for some minimum-wage service people
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The Allies delayed coming to Poland's aid when Hitler attacked Poland because Poland had marched into the Sudetenland alongside Hitler's troops. Have a look at what happened in Zaolzie.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Of course, that doesn't excuse the vile havoc that the Nazis wreaked on Poland and Jews there in particular. But the Poles were not the innocent victims of Nazi aggression they would have you believe.
How 802 Square Kilometers of Land Caused a World War
"At war’s end, Churchill gave Joseph
Re: where are fines on Russia? (Score:1)
They have the money (Score:1)
It's just ironic (Score:1)
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Google is too busy micromanaging its index for narrative purposes. It's hard keeping all that "racist" content off the results page.
Re: It's just ironic (Score:1)
When Will New Soviet Russia (Score:2)
What a racket! (Score:2)
Step 1: Foreign government declares some content to be illegal.
Step 2: Foreign government fines company for not kowtowing to their authoritarian regime (which they had no say in electing, btw.)
Step 3: Profit.
Maybe the material was hateful or extremist (Score:1)
Protests tend to be hateful.