Facebook blocks Russian page supporting Navalny, Putin's biggest critic

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/facebook-blocks-russian-page-supporting-navalny-putins-biggest-critic/2014/12/20/a8c782b8-8877-11e4-abcf-5a3d7b3b20b8_story.html

by geoka9 • 12 years ago

178 61 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

huhtenberg4• 12 years ago

A bit of OT, but based on what I read on Russian Internets this Navalny person is generally recognized as a US sock-puppet even in the anti-Putin circles. His trial is clearly political, but it's less about him personally and more about keeping pressure on other agents of influence.

Facebook and Twitter though ... they don't have much choice, do they? They don't comply - they get a site-wide ban in Russia, which is hardly a headache they want being for-profit entities. Capitalism at work.

kunstmord• 12 years ago

Except that in 3 years I haven't encountered/read a single "sane" opposition figure's opinion who would consider Navalny a sock puppet.

geoka93• 12 years ago

"Anti-Putin circles" is rather vague. It covers anything from the extreme right to the extreme left. If a "circle" is xenophobic then, surely, most of the centrist/liberal opposition are US sock-puppets to them, simply by the virtue of having a similar political agenda to the Western mainstream politics.

I, personally, am not a fan of Navalny (I dislike racial slur in his blog posts and some of his views that I consider chauvinist), but the trend is clear: he and Khodorkovsky have been the only viable opposition leaders in Russia in the recent years. Both of them ended up in jail on similar white-collar crime charges.

huhtenberg4• 12 years ago

There's certain logic to what happened to Khodorkovksy (and earlier to Berezovsky and few other people) - they all were oligarchs, they blatantly stole their way into their riches, but they were allowed by the state to use them. That is until they tried to use their money to try and un-sit those who let them become obnoxiously wealthy. They weren't the opposition per se. They were just former buddies that got drunk on money power and decided to play against their own. And they lost.

xnull2guest7• 12 years ago

Sockpuppet means more than aligned views - it implies collaboration.

It's interesting to note here that in America the IRS is regularly weaponized to attack political opponents of whichever current administration.

rev• 12 years ago

white-collar crime charges

Agreed re Navalny, but Khodorkovsky was charged with three murder cases (and one case of attempted murder), so I'm less sure about the collar color.

DenisM4• 12 years ago

He is only recognized as "us sock-puppet" by those trying to smear critics of the regime. To add credibility to their baseless arguments, they often resort to tricks, such as ascribing the smears to some nebulous moral authority.

kirushik• 12 years ago

Also, those 'they' are typically on Putin's payroll: http://www.stopfake.org/en/putin-s-trolls/

elementai• 12 years ago

Contrary to latter is an example of Vkontakte russian social network refusing to block ukranian EuroMaidan groups. Which subsequently led to it's founder Pavel Durov resignation.

SpaceRaccoon• 12 years ago

So apparently the narrative goes, he resigned, the network is owned by Putin's cronies now...yet all the Euromaidan groups still exist.

onewaystreet• 12 years ago

The alternative is that all of Facebook gets blocked. People wanting to access this page are better off doing so through TOR anyway.

imaginenore• 12 years ago

Except, from what I hear, Facebook itself blocked it for all the users registered in Russia, so TOR can't help you.

goblin89• 12 years ago

from what I hear, Facebook itself blocked it for all the users registered in Russia, so TOR can't help you.

What do you mean by “registered in Russia”? If Facebook doesn’t employ IP geolocation or something of that sort then anyone who feels strongly about the issue will simply change or unset their country in profile settings.

jamesaguilar• 12 years ago

On some level, that might be preferable because of the additional outrage it might generate.

wmf• 12 years ago

Twitter/Facebook have argued that they can do more good by being 99% accessible in oppressive countries than by generating outrage.

eliben• 12 years ago

The relations of tech giants with totalitarian governments like Russia is a typical tragedy of the commons. The only step that makes sense for the common good is to remove all business from that country. But Facebook can't do it, because then Google will get all the profits, and Google/Yahoo/whomever can't do it for the same reason. If they all could just agree...

yabatopia• 12 years ago

Of course Facebook has a choice. It may cost them some money, but refusing to collaborate with totalitarian governments is an option. Look at Google versus China. Google had the courage to resist Chinese censorship and I really respect them for that.

polack• 12 years ago

Lets not forget that Google complied with Chinese censorship requests until China hacked them. As long as only minorities are the victim then these Internet giants don't give a damn. So now we just wait until Russia bans Facebook for other reasons and watch Facebook collect goodwill when they turn around and start to "stand up against censorship".

dfkf• 12 years ago

Bot google and facebook have very strong domestic competitors in Russia. So their withdrawal from the country would achieve exactly nothing.

us0r• 12 years ago

Unless I missed another story this week Google is leaving Russia.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-pulls-out-of-russia-20...

colinbartlett• 12 years ago

Closing their office but still providing their services to users inside the Russian firewall.

wmeredith• 12 years ago

Holy hell, there's more to this world than profit. Of course Facebook has a choice. Or more directly in this case, Zuckerberg does. If he can unilaterally spend $19b on Snapchat and have "The Fucking CEO" on his business card, then he can certainly say, "we're pulling out of Russia, because there are more important things than money". This is disgusting.

chii3• 12 years ago

"we're pulling out of Russia, because there are more important things than money"

if he really thinks like that, he won't be as rich as he is today (and i m also speaking generically about those who are very rich). You don't become _that_ successful without giving up something.

DenisM4• 12 years ago

This incident highlights dangers of centralized information distribution brought to us by social networks - being a single point of control they present attractive target for pressure by censors of all kinds, be it dictator regimes, powerful corporations in the west, etc. It's not unlike Napster - there is a lot of benefit to everyone being in one place, but far too easy to subvert. The solution to Facebook censorship will likely take a similar path - gradual decentralization.

brador• 12 years ago

There are advantages to this, at least temporarily. We can see who wants to censor the information. With a distributed network they would simply blend into the crowd.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

And what good does that do us? With a decentralized network those who want to censor can't, so they can be ignored, even as they call for "some kind of censorship" (you can see then who they are, too).

raquo7• 12 years ago

It's usually pretty obvious who wants to censor what information and why.

sysk• 12 years ago

The solution to Facebook censorship will likely take a similar path - gradual decentralization.

Like the web? Sorry for the snark but being blocked from Facebook is the equivalent of being blocked from Geocities in my mind. I do think a decentralised social network would be a step forward but let's not attribute too much power to Facebook as it only gives them more legitimacy.

xnull2guest7• 12 years ago

I do think Facebook has a lot of pull. Many people get their news through their Facebook feed (an awful idea) - at least many people that I know. And it's the largest place where you can discuss things with close friends and family in mass. Other places on the internet allow mass broadcast - for information dispersal content not only matters but also source/reputation.

DenisM4• 12 years ago

The web still has chokepoints at DNS and PKI, and routing is also vulnerable to blocks. USENET/FIDONET are better mental models when it comes to resilience.

mkempe2• 12 years ago

If you want freedom of the press, you should own the press. Today that may mean a distant web server or two, a printer, some paper, some ink. The samizdat was not built on the shoulders of some corporate behemoth.

Wherever you may live, don't expect Facebook to be your agent for freedom. On the contrary.

sigzero• 12 years ago

I don't think anyone seriously thinks Facebook is an "agent for freedom".

mkempe2• 12 years ago

The point is that instead of countless people writing their thoughts in Facebook messages or status updates, because it feels easy and free, freedom would be better served by people owning blogs and other personal channels of expression.

anonymfus2• 12 years ago

Your own server has much bigger chances to be banned than popular site. Because banning Facebook, Google, or ever Github will cause outrage amongst people who never heard about you.

raquo7• 12 years ago

Not so sure about that. Russian regulators normally don't care about tiny operations that don't influence the popular opinion. For example, there are lots of blogs talking trash about Putin and no one cares. But if you're as big as Google, you can't have "fuck Putin" on your front page. That usually leads to persecution for bullshit reasons like Navalny here.

danabramov• 12 years ago

They blocked this event: https://www.facebook.com/events/417200101767938/

Somebody quickly created another one which gathered followers twice as quickly [1]: https://www.facebook.com/events/406603402849183/

Since there are no organizers, if this one is taken down, people will create a new one.

Finally, there's a website redirecting to the newest unblocked event in case current one gets blocked: https://15.navalny.us

[1] http://leonwolf.livejournal.com/554179.html

Facebook blocks Russian page supporting Navalny, Putin's biggest critic

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