Since the beginning of February, providers in Russia have been required to provide users with free access to «socially significant sites» — the first of these were the State Services portal and the VKontakte social network. There are 371 positions in the full list of such sites approved by the government. In addition to numerous propaganda resources like RT and websites of federal TV channels, it also includes other products of the VK holding, which has recently been controlled by Gazprom Media, in particular Odnoklassniki and Moi Mir.
The law on the accessible Internet, which will provide Russians with access to part of the resources of the Network, even with a zero balance on the account of the Internet provider, was adopted last year. At first glance, this is an example of state concern for the interests of citizens, surprising for our time. Indeed, as Dmitry Medvedev might say, having access to the Internet is better than not having it. By providing free social access to the Web, the state supposedly goes ahead of many Western countries and realizes the human right to receive information, enshrined in the UN.
At the same time, experts working with the latest system of Russian digital censorship, and in particular with DPI traffic filtering devices, hint that the authorities may pursue their own goals in this matter. In fact, under the guise of socially significant sites, testing of «white lists on the Internet» has begun: users with a zero balance will be the first Russians who have no access to the global Internet — but only those projects that are approved by officials.
Any modern site, especially a large social network, is based on a complex international infrastructure and uses international servers to track activity and deliver user content (CDN services). By ensuring the uninterrupted operation of VKontakte for “social users” within the framework of this pilot project, the state will be able to extend the “white lists” to all citizens of the country if necessary.
Photo: Egor Aleev/TASS
There is a good side to this too: a complete internet shutdown, as happened recently in Kazakhstan, is unlikely in this scenario, users will always be able to provide access to 371 verified projects from the government list. Otherwise, the development of the “accessible Internet” according to this scenario looks like a prologue to a full-fledged “sovereign Runet”, in which the state not only monitors all user activity, but also knows exactly which sites are available to you from the national segment of the Web.
There is a fair amount of irony in the fact that VKontakte became the first major platform to receive state support.
The social network has had a bad reputation in recent years due to its complete transparency to intelligence agencies. It was in VK that the main part of the “landing for likes” campaign developed.
Moreover, historically the popularity of VKontakte, which remains the largest social network in Russia, has been associated with an abundance of pirated content. People registered not only to communicate with each other, but also to listen to music and watch movies for free. The VKontakte audio service, which faced numerous claims from record labels, was eventually licensed, but the status of many videos on the site still raises questions. At the same time, last year the social network headed for the development of its own video hosting as a strategic priority. «VK Video» today in Russia is in second place after YouTube — it is with the efforts of «VKontakte» that the plan for «import substitution» in this market segment can be connected.
The “socially significant” status of VKontakte becomes completely comical if we remember that the site is still tolerant of pornography – this, apparently, is the main “competitive advantage” of the Gazprom-Media site. Officially, probably, pornography is not encouraged by the administration of the social network, and the fact that it is still present in it is explained by «the inability to delete all user content manually.» At the same time, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram solved this problem long ago, both through moderation and through the work of neural networks. VKontakte is clearly in no hurry to follow suit: pornography is not a bad thing when it comes to retaining users.
Photo: RIA Novosti
Thus, Russia has become the first state in the world where, in order to combat Western platforms and values, the government is ready to subsidize the viewing of pornographic videos for its citizens.
Perhaps, even Sweden can envy such freedom: there are not hypocrites in our government.
In parallel, in order to fight YouTube as the main independent media platform in the country, Roskomnadzor is preparing a new package of «economic measures”, including a ban on the monetization of videos for bloggers. Formally, the reason for these measures is the «unfriendly actions» of the American social network in relation to the German-language channel RT.
In fact, we see how a big campaign is starting to squeeze YouTube out of the Russian market. Free pornography for Russian citizens on the VK Video platform looks like part of this brilliant plan.