Classifieds, and chat with them – Newspaper Kommersant No. 141 (7342) dated 08/05/2022
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If new amendments to the law “On Advertising” are adopted, users of social networks and instant messengers will not be able to make their own announcements in chats and thematic groups, the Commission of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP) for Communications and IT warns. The current version of the draft has too broad interpretations, so such risks are possible, lawyers and market participants agree. The author of the initiative assures that it will not affect users of social networks.
“Kommersant” got acquainted with the position of the commission of the RSPP on communications and IT on the bill on a single regulator of digital advertising structures and announcements of individuals. In addition to the already sounded arguments against the adoption of the initiative, the review argues that the project will also affect social networks, the functionality of which will be “significantly curtailed.”
We are talking about the draft amendments to the law “On Advertising”, submitted to the State Duma by the Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Artem Kiryanov, who was accepted in the first reading on 15 July. The document implies that the management of all advertising screens, as well as classifiers, will be given to one market player. The authors of the amendments explain this by the need to protect billboards and ad services from cyber attacks. Many market participants and government agencies have previously spoken out against the adoption of the amendments, stating the risks of monopolization of industries.
As clarified to Kommersant in the RSPP commission, according to the current version of the document, a single regulator will have to manage all the announcements of individuals that are placed not only in classifieds like Avito, Profi.ru, HeadHunter, etc., but also in social networks and even messengers.
“There is no specification in the project that we are talking about classifieds, we are talking about the announcements of individuals on the Internet. Therefore, if the project enters into force in this form, ordinary users of social networks and instant messengers will not be able to simply write in the chat “I am selling a stroller, does anyone need it?” or place such an ad on their page or in a group, they will have to advertise only through a new single operator,” the commission believes.
Artem Kiryanov told Kommersant that he did not agree with this interpretation: “In accordance with the text of the bill, the activities of persons who carry out entrepreneurial activities in the form of electronic bulletin boards and are included in the corresponding list approved by the Ministry of Digital Development are limited.” Chats, thematic groups and instant messengers in which people exchange information are not subject to regulation, Mr. Kiryanov assured.
Odnoklassniki, VKontakte and the VK holding, which manages these social networks, declined to comment.
“The draft law in its original version has too wide scope for various interpretations, this already indicates that it requires significant improvements,” an interlocutor close to one of the social networks told Kommersant.
The explanatory note to the document states that the requirements of the bill do not apply to users of social networks, notes Galina Gamburg, head of the property relations practice at Amulex.ru: “But this non-involvement is not directly spelled out in the text of the draft, so I have to share the fears of the RSPP commission.” The definition of electronic ads of natural persons, formulated in the project, states that these are ads placed on “websites”, and social networks can be attributed to the latter, she explains.
The proposed wording of the draft law is “extremely broad,” agrees Alexander Gavrilov, managing lawyer at Birch Legal: “If the text of the bill is not significantly clarified, in order to “sell the garage,” one will have to face a bureaucracy that is not entirely transparent.”
The head of the Internet Research Institute, Karen Kazaryan, believes that it is hardly possible to prohibit users from publishing an ad simply in their feed: “But it’s another matter that social networks have functionality that allows you to publish an ad in the classified format, for example, the Market and Ads services. in “VKontakte”; such functionality, in my opinion, falls under the scope of the bill.
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