Will be called “Internet creatures”: the deputies came up with severe punishment for trash streamers

Thrash streamers will be called “Internet creatures”, imprisoned for up to two years or fined two million. The meeting of the Committee on Youth Policy of the State Duma, dedicated to legislative initiatives to regulate trash streaming, was emotional, but interesting.

If anyone does not know, trash streaming is an aggressive Internet broadcast. One person tortures and humiliates another on camera, and broadcasts everything that happens live via the Internet, and fans of such cruel games watch, trudge from what is happening, and even give the task of how the executioner should punish the victim more severely. Naturally, for money.

As much as one would like to think that such stories may be of interest only to a narrow circle of mentally ill people, alas, the situation is much worse. The audience of some trash streamers is huge – sometimes the number of views reaches several million. As, however, are their fees, and the saddest thing is that minors are involved in this – both as actors and as spectators.

Legislators are seriously concerned about the problem of aggressive streams after the accident that occurred in the Moscow region in December 2020. Then the video blogger Stanislav Reshetnyak kicked his girlfriend out on the balcony in the cold in her underwear and froze her to death. The bastard was then given 6 years, but how many of these are still at large?

All speakers during the round table, which was held on Tuesday by the Committee on Youth Policy of the State Duma, can be divided into two groups: rigid idealists and cautious rationalists.

Senator Alexei Pushkov was one of the first to speak, he noted that the current legislation in Russia does not close the possibility for crimes committed using the Internet and for the sake of generating income. And also the fact that existing laws punish already committed crimes on the Internet, but are not aimed at preventing them.

“Thrash streams are a fundamentally new phenomenon; they cannot be reduced to hooliganism, beatings, or bodily harm. This is a qualitatively new phenomenon, so we need qualitatively new laws,” he noted and added that the law against thrash streaming was needed yesterday, so it must be adopted at least tomorrow.

Then the floor was given to the supporters of drastic measures, they offered to hit the trash streamers from all sides: both materially and morally. For example, for violent videos posted on social networks or on other Internet platforms, they will be fined the first time, and starting from the second, they will be imprisoned. Moreover, a fine of up to 1 million rubles, if adult participants are removed, and if minors are involved, then up to 2 million or imprisonment for up to two years.

“I think this is the right decision, because the popular trash streamers, who had a large number of users and donations, received, as they themselves boasted more than once, up to 1.5-2 million rubles a month. It is necessary to deprive them of such pleasure, to deprive them of the opportunity to earn on bullying and violations. Such a fine is a blow to the financial component of this malicious activity,” Alexey Pushkov explained.

Another senator Alexander Bashkin compared streamers with gladiators, and he called trash streaming a stream of dirt that has no place in our society. Deputy Boris Chernyshev also suggested taking the path of debunking beautiful foreign names and publicly calling trash streamers “Internet creatures”, in addition, obliging Rosfinmonitoring to track the cash flows of such video bloggers, identify those who transfer fees to them, and declare them sponsors and customers of crimes . As they say, let the country know its “heroes”, and let these people become handshakes even in the circle of their loved ones. True, he did not explain how to practically implement this (the process of stigmatizing Internet creatures and their fans).

But there were also rational proposals. For example, the deputies expressed cautious fears that in reality it would be quite difficult to punish streamers, because many of them live abroad, and the hosts that host their dirty products are also located in far abroad countries. In addition, the victims of their humiliation often do it voluntarily and pretend, that is, they are actors, and they will not claim their tormentors. How do you punish them all?

There was another consideration: if you fined 2 million for streams with the participation of minors in their production, then who? The parents of these brats? Where do they get such money from? And if you imprison the participants themselves, is it not too harsh, because they are still children, albeit unreasonable? There was also a proposal to include bloggers exposed to cruelty in a special register, but immediately another participant of the round table remarked: wouldn’t this be the best advertisement for them? In general, the draft law is already ready, but there are more questions about it than answers.

In only one thing, everyone agreed that in order to stop the practice of trash streaming, a separate article is needed, which will emphasize the special corpus delicti. Because now trash streamers are equated with hooligans, but you can’t compare those who spontaneously got into a fight with those who humiliate and torture women, children, and sometimes even disabled people on camera for money. We are talking about deliberate, malicious bullying, humiliation of human dignity, for this there should be a more severe punishment.

After all, wild entertainment on the network may well end in a real murder of a person.