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Russian President Vladimir Putin has never been particularly fond of the World Wide Web. Last year,he declared that the Internet was a CIA project and introduced draconian legislation to intimidate the biggest internet companies in the country.
Putin's approach has been somewhat successful in both curbing the services offered by major internet companies in Russia and allowing the Kremlin to censor the internet. In 2014, Vkontakte, or a Russian social network styled after Facebook,was put under state control, and its founder was ousted from Russia.
But after war broke out in Ukraine, and it was through Vkontakte—now led by the son of the head of the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Company—that journalists were able to find boastful descriptions of military missions in Ukraine posted online by Russian soldiers. It's just one example of the ups and downs in Putin's on-going fight to control who uses the internet,and what for.
This fight is documented in a fresh book by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan: "The Red Web: The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the fresh Online Revolutionaries." Here, Soldatov discusses the state of internet censorship and surveillance in Russia.
What you'll learn from this segment:How the internet has evolved over time in Russia.
How online surveillance works and doesn't work in Russia nowadays.
What approaches opposition activists expend to organize online.
Source: wnyc.org