Андрей Солдатов - The Red Web - The Struggle Between Russia's Digital Dictators and the New Online Revolutionaries

On August 2, 2014, Ksenzov’s agency, Roskomnadzor, reached a new level, attempting to censor the Internet beyond the Russian borders. The agency sent a request to fourteen websites to block information about an unapproved march in Novosibirsk to support greater autonomy for Siberia from the Moscow central authorities. The march was organized by Artem Loskutov, a twenty-eight-year-old performance artist in Novosibirsk who played out political themes in his art. He wanted to protest Russia’s interference in Ukraine by mimicking the Kremlin’s rhetoric about “federalization” of Ukraine to justify the separatists’ war there. [23] Glenn Kates, “Moscow Freaks Out About Federalization Rally… In Siberia,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, March 6, 2014, www.rferl.org/content/russia-separatism-rally-siberia/26515418.html . The news of Loskutov’s planned demonstration went viral, and the Russian BBC interviewed Loskutov. At once the service received a request from Roskomnadzor to remove the interview from its site. Ksenzov confirmed that the request was valid but declined to explain. In response, the BBC made the request public and refused to remove the interview. [24] BBC World Service statement regarding interview with Artem Loskutov, BBC Media center, August 5, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/statements/artem-loskutov . Roskomnadzor threatened to block the site bbcrussian.com on Russian soil, but never followed through.

Most of the fourteen sites complied with Roskomnadzor’s request. Among them were Ukrainian websites. One of them was the site TSN.ua, whose editors said they were acting “to maintain accessibility of the entire site for the Russian audience.” [25] “Roskomnadzor dobralsya I do ukrainskikh SMI” [Roskomnadzor Reached Ukrainian Media], BBC Ukrainian service, August 4, 2014, www.bbc.co.uk/ukrainian/ukraine_in_russian/2014/08/140804_ru_s_roskomnadzor_restricting_access . Other sites, like obozrevatel.com, glavcom.ua, and delo.ua, refused to comply, so Roskomnadzor blocked them on Russian soil.

On August 6 the German Internet hosting provider Hetzner Online AG received an e-mail from Roskomnadzor requesting they suspend hosting of the popular Ukrainian news media site glavkom.ua. Hetzner agreed and sent a warning letter to the editors of glavkom.ua. Immediately the letter was posted online, triggering protests—people were outraged that a request from Russia to a firm in Germany could take down a website in Ukraine. Hetzner was forced to apologize.

In December 2014, however, Roskomnadzor sent a warning to the American news site BuzzFeed for posting a video the Russian authorities deemed extremist. The video was removed not by BuzzFeed but by Google, which owns YouTube. [26] Miriam Elder, “Russia Threatens to Ban BuzzFeed,” BuzzFeed.com, December 6, 2014, www.buzzfeed.com/miriamelder/russia-threatens-to-ban-buzzfeed#.wy34B5ad .

This was an important victory for Roskomnadzor, marking the first time the agency openly and shamelessly blocked foreign websites for expressing political views regarding Russia.

But in late December 2014 Roskomnadzor made another move, this time against Facebook. On December 19 activists opened an event group on Facebook in support of Alexey Navalny. Navalny, along with his younger brother, was facing trumped-up accusations of fraud. The case was used to keep Navalny under pressure as well as a pretext to keep him under house arrest for months. Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence Navalny to ten years in jail, and the verdict was expected in few days. The event on Facebook was actually an invitation to gather in the center of Moscow to protest against the verdict, as there was no doubt he would be found guilty. The prosecutor’s office immediately issued a request to Roskomnadzor to block the event, and Roskomnadzor forwarded the document to Facebook’s office in London. [27] VKontakte was also under pressure. Pavel Durov’s brother Nikolai, who also used to work in VKontakte, posted a message on his page on Sunday, December 22, that on this day alone VKontakte got fifty-three requests from Roskomnadzor to block events, groups, and pages where the word Navalny is mentioned. For details, see http://geektimes.ru/post/243309 . Facebook complied, blocking the group on December 20. [28] Ilya Kuvakin and Daria Luganskaya, “V Facebook zablokirovali stranitsu gruppi v podderzhku” [Facebook Blocked a Group Page in Support of Navalny], RBC, December 20, 2014, www.rbc.ru/rbcfreenews/5495b98a9a7947bb5e5f3e5a .

The outraged activists launched several new groups, and Leviev, in few hours, added a new “big red button” on the site navalny.us that linked to the current, unblocked event group on Facebook. Facebook’s decision to comply with the Russian censor triggered a great deal of outrage in Moscow and abroad. [29] Andrew Roth and David M. Herszenhorn, “Facebook Page Goes Dark, Angering Russia Dissidents,” New York Times , December 22, 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/12/23/world/europe/facebook-angers-russian-opposition-by-blocking-protest-page.html?_r=0 . Following the outcry, Facebook and Twitter decided not to block the event groups launched by Navalny’s supporters. [30] “Istochniki Dozhdya: Facebook and Twitter otkazalis blokirovat stranitsi storonnikov Navalnogo” [Sources of Dozhd: Facebook and Twitter Refused to Block Pages for Supporters of Navalny], TV Dozhd, December 22, 2014, http://tvrain.ru/articles/istochniki_dozhdja_facebook_i_twitter_otkazalis_blokirovat_stranitsy_storonnikov_navalnogo-379720 .

The online protest forced the authorities to change their plans: instead of January 15, the Navalny brothers’ verdict was announced on December 30. Alexey Navalny was given three and a half years of suspended sentence, and his younger brother, Oleg Navalny, was sent to prison for three and a half years. [31] Maria Tsvetkova, “Kremlin Critic Navalny Given Suspended Sentence, Brother Jailed,” Reuters, December 30, 2014, www.reuters.com/article/2014/12/30/us-russia-crisis-navalny-idUSKBN0K80AA20141230 . If the authorities had hoped to discourage protesters by shifting the verdict to December 30, the day before New Year’s Eve, they miscalculated. That cold night thousands of Muscovites assembled on Tverskaya Street, two hundred meters from the Kremlin, to protest Navalny’s verdict. Navalny, who was still under house arrest, made it to Tverskaya but was detained shortly after he appeared along with some of his close supporters.

Almost twenty-five years prior, Relcom and Demos programmers didn’t wait for someone to tell them what to do during the putsch. Likewise, in December 2014 activists didn’t wait for a leader’s decision—in this case, Navalny—to start launching groups to support him on Facebook. It was a horizontal structure, a network, that made all of that possible. It repeated itself time and again.

Although Navalny stood as a symbol of Moscow’s protests in December 2011, he was under lock and key most of December. It was activists and journalists who took over organizing protest rallies. Three years later, in December 2014, Navalny was again under lock and key, placed under house arrest, and he couldn’t take part in organizing efforts. But again it didn’t matter. The group on Facebook was launched first by a Navalny friend, Leonid Volkov, and when this first group was blocked, a dozen new groups were launched, this time by people with no ties to Navalny who were simply outraged by censorship.

The authorities who sought to block, filter, and censor simply did not know what to do with the forces behind the “big red button.”