The State Duma discussed ways to protect children from destructive materials on the Internet

The State Duma on Thursday discussed issues of protecting young people from “destructive content” distributed on social media. This topic was raised both at a joint meeting of the committees on youth policy and security, and at a meeting of the parliamentary commission that is investigating “the criminal actions of the Kyiv regime against minors.” As a result, participants in both events agreed on the need to expand the technical capabilities of content blocking. The Prosecutor General’s Office is already preparing a corresponding initiative together with the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor, parliamentarians said.

The fact that senators and deputies turned to the government with a request to create mechanisms for blocking “destructive content” in instant messengers was announced at a meeting of the parliamentary commission investigating crimes of the “Kiev regime” against children by its co-chair, State Duma Deputy Speaker Anna Kuznetsova. According to her, the commission analyzed publications in pro-Ukrainian Telegram channels and found that the number of information attacks on children increased by about a third. Ms. Kuznetsova connects this with the activation of the Ukrainian Center for Information and Psychological Operations, which is trying to influence minors in the post-Soviet countries.

“The center targets destructive content on the network. It is aimed at inciting ethnic conflicts among teenagers, forming protest movement cells, and discrediting Russian values,” explained the vice speaker. “Therefore, we are sending an appeal to the government with a proposal to create mechanisms for blocking destructive content in instant messengers. We understand that for the most part this is the responsibility of the owners of these channels themselves, but when it comes to minor children, government mechanisms should be involved,” stressed Anna Kuznetsova.

According to the co-chair of the commission, vice-speaker of the Federation Council Inna Svyatenko, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation, together with the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor, is already preparing a bill that expands the technical capabilities of blocking illegal content.

“I think we will also get involved in this work. As soon as the bill is submitted to the State Duma, we will accompany this work here,” the senator said at the commission meeting. In addition, in her opinion, it is necessary at the legislative level to provide requirements directly for those who produce and distribute socially significant content. Ms. Svyatenko is convinced that authors who distribute such materials must bear responsibility for the quality and reliability of publicly posted information. “Sometimes there is a misconception about the professional qualifications of authors. There are a lot of such messages that come on behalf of people who are authorities,” explained the vice-speaker of the Federation Council. In her opinion, such work could be undertaken by members of the recently created working group in the Duma on improving legislation in the field of information business and the blogosphere.

Measures to protect young people from the influence of destructive content were discussed on Thursday at a joint meeting of the Duma committees on security and youth policy, which was attended by representatives of the presidential administration, the Ministry of Education, Rosmolodezh, as well as the Investigative Committee, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Russian Guard and Roskomnadzor. At the beginning of the event, most of which was held behind closed doors, the chairman of the youth policy committee, Artem Metelev, said that young people and children often become victims of information and psychological experiments initiated from outside Russia. “Recruitment takes place on social networks: they gain confidence, blackmail, force them to carry out tasks… Our reaction as a state must be as tough as possible,” he noted.

Among the potential legal measures, parliamentarians considered such issues as a “oblivion mechanism” for school shooters, ensuring state regulation in the field of domain name registration and leasing of server equipment with mandatory personal identification, criminalization of acts related to malicious programs, as well as the creation and administration of “criminal resources,” said Anatoly Vyborny, deputy chairman of the security committee, at the end of the meeting. Also, members of the two committees agreed to create a working group on improving legislation in this area.

Anastasia Kornya, Grigory Leiba