Roskomnadzor has banned the distribution of Google ads in Russia. The decision was taken by the department due to dozens of cases of “discrimination” from Google services, including Youtube.
“Due to numerous violations of Russian law by the American IT company Google LLC, Roskomnadzor decided to take coercive measures of an informative and economic nature,” the report states.
Six Google services will be flagged for violating Russian Federation laws: search engine, Google Play app store, YouTube, YouTube Music, Google Chat and Gmail mail service.
RKN said information systems should inform users that Google is violating Russian law. In addition, advertising of Google and its information sources “as an advertising object” should be prohibited.
Roskomnadzor added that these measures against Google will remain in effect until the company eliminates violations of Russian law.
Since April 2020, RKN has identified around 60 “incidents of discrimination against content directed at Russian media, government, public and sports organizations and figures” on the Google-owned YouTube video hosting service.
On April 7, YouTube confirmed that the video recording of the speech of Maria Zakharova, the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, dated March 17, 2022, was blocked.
“Our community guidelines prohibit content that denies, downplays, or downplays well-documented acts of violence, and we remove content related to incidents in Ukraine that violates this policy,” the company said.
On April 5, Roskomnadzor asked the Google administration to restore the official websites of Russian government agencies in search results – they said Google left the websites of the Ministry of Defense and the Russian Interior Ministry out of the question for Russian audiences. .
The public procurement portal has also reportedly disappeared from search results. Instead of sections, users are offered links to social media accounts and Wikipedia articles.
At the same time, Google said that in the publication of its search engine, it did not block the link to the website of the Russian Ministry of Defense. “The webpage appears to be blocking our systems and preventing them from discovering it. Therefore, the site does not appear in the search results for certain search queries,” the message says.
On April 2, Roskomnadzor announced YouTube’s reluctance to comply with Russian requirements. According to the department, more than 10,000 extremist materials have been uploaded to the service. If video hosting doesn’t start removing illegal content and remove restrictions on Russian channels, it may be blocked in Russia.
RKN added that despite calls to end censorship against Russians, 36 accounts of Russian media and public figures have been blocked. These are Russia Today, Rossiya-24, Sputnik, Zvezda, RBC, NTV and others.
On March 10, YouTube suspended all monetization functions for Russian users, and on March 11 it decided to block state-funded Russian media channels. The accounts of RT, Sputnik, Rossiya Segodnya and RBC have been blocked.