“Toxic rubbish”: Russia proposed to create a register of destructive Internet content

The fight against the destructive content of the Internet is becoming increasingly tough and consistent on the part of the state. Experts note the increase in cyber attacks in social networks on children. Plus, with the beginning of the NMD, one has to fight with the information onslaught from the enemy. So far, it has not been possible to completely get rid of toxic content – there are too many obstacles, but there is progress. This was told by experts in the field of cybersecurity.

Igor Ashmanov, a member of the HRC, an expert in the field of information technology, recalled at a round table in the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation that in January of this year, the President of the Russian Federation instructed to consider the possibility of creating a register of destructive content on the Internet – this is the content that does not fall under any criminal, not under administrative responsibility, but definitely harmful.

– Work on the creation of such a register is underway. During this time, various events have taken place that have facilitated this work for us,” said Igor Ashmanov. – There was a fear of how we would deal with Western social networks that would not want to obey us, but they were blocked. And this is very good. The problem of how to force foreign social networks banned in our country to filter content is no longer worth it.

The expert noted the second positive moment – in the first reading, the law of Deputy Khinshtein and his colleagues on the ban on LGBT propaganda was adopted; however, he noted, the struggle continues over it. A sharp conflict arose over games – those who promote this law believe that games should be included in it, but not everyone agrees with this. “I don’t know why they are against it, because games are a gigantic media space, where a huge amount of communication takes place, up to the trade in illegal substances and contract killings, all this happens in game chats, and this needs to be dealt with,” Ashmanov said.

The expert also spoke about the difficulties in relations with Russian social networks, which “do what they want.” Despite the fact that there is a law on self-censorship of social networks, they do not enforce it. Perhaps the fact is that there are no sanctions in the law and no one can punish them. For example, the management of VKontakte claims that they have “everything is fine with moderation and everything is filtered.” “But this is not true. It’s the same with other social networks. We know how much toxic stuff is out there,” Ashmanov said. This project is designed to fight it. Its task is to build a procedure in which the leaders of our social networks are aware of what is happening, the business will take social responsibility and begin to moderate content in good faith.

As an example, Ashmanov said that he is constantly being approached by the DPR Ministry of Information about extremely toxic Ukrainian propaganda posts that are not blocked either on VKontakte or elsewhere on the Internet. When they turn to the moderators of these social networks, they answer them: there will be an order from the prosecutor’s office, we will remove it.

“13.5 million teenagers are under the constant influence of various kinds of destructive content on social networks,” Ekaterina Mizulina, head of the Safe Internet League, expressed her concern. – And if all of us now in this current difficult situation do not put an effective barrier to this flow of dirt, then we will lose Russia as such. Because through children and teenagers there are both manipulations with their consciousness, and serious processing of a political nature. If we analyze it, then all this is closely connected with domestic political interference in the affairs of our state.

Mizulina complained that, although there have been new changes in the legislation to combat this phenomenon, nevertheless, there is no clarity and transparency of individual terms, responsibility for certain actions is not spelled out. She confirmed that the adopted laws do not work: Russian social networks do not want to delete destructive information and engage in self-censorship without the decisions of the Prosecutor General’s Office and Roskomnadzor.

– Social networks explain this behavior with commercial interests, they say, they do not want to lose the audience, but it would be worth looking at where these moderators currently work. I believe that they may have been working from the territory of Ukraine or Georgia for a long time, and in certain cases this is already deliberate sabotage, and not a struggle for “likes,” Ashmanov said.

And yet the fruits of this struggle are. “Despite such a long journey – the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the RKN – we manage to bring up to 70% of the requests that we receive to a result, that is, to the final blocking or removal of certain prohibited materials by social networks,” Mizulina noted. At the same time, with regard to controversial materials, when a court decision is required, this procedure can last six months, and during this time the audience coverage of these publications can reach up to 50 million views.

Mizulina, in addition, said that they are seeing an increase in attacks on children, “new ones appear, or, more precisely, old threats to children begin to revive in a new form.” Experts are constantly faced with new “groups of death”, and one of the main threats in our time is streaming – live broadcasts on the Web, because not only the propaganda of suicides or illegal substances can go through this, but also direct advertising of their points of sale.