Roskomnadzor, Russia’s telecommunications watchdog, has fined Google 68 million rubles (roughly $1.2 million) for helping spread what it called “unreliable” information on the war in Ukraine and the failure to remove it from its platforms.
The Russian telecommunications regulator said Google’s YouTube online video sharing platform “purposefully contributes” to spreading inaccurate info on Russia’s war in Ukraine, thus defaming Russia’s army.
Per Roskomnadzor’s count, at the moment, YouTube is hosting more than 7,000 materials that also promote what the telecom watchdog considers illegal, including ones promoting extremist views, indifference to the life and health of minors, and calls for protests.
“Google LLC and its information resources have been repeatedly brought to administrative responsibility for violation of Russian legislation in terms of failure to remove prohibited information. For this, Google LLC was fined a total of 68 million rubles,” Roskomnadzor said.
Google now also risks a revenue-based fine as high as 10% of its annual Russian turnover for repeatedly failing to restrict access to materials containing information prohibited in Russia.
Russian bailiffs had preciously seized 7.22 billion rubles (roughly $133 million) from Google’s accounts in May for repeatedly refusing to delete content banned in Russia, according to an order issued by the Tagansky Court of Moscow on December 24, 2021.
Google’s Russian subsidiary filed for bankruptcy on June 16, according to documents filed with Moscow’s Arbitration Court after its accounts were frozen, per Interfax.
Google’s free services will remain accessible
While Google Russia’s operation has been made impossible, the company added that its free services (including Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and Google Play) would remain accessible in Russia.
In March, Roskomnadzor also banned Alphabet’s news aggregator service Google News and blocked access to its news.google.com domain for providing access to “unreliable information” on the ongoing war in Ukraine.
The decision followed Russian President Vladimir Putin signing into law new legislation that makes it illegal to spread “knowingly fake news” about Russia’s war in Ukraine and introducing jail terms of up to 15 years.
The same month, the telecom regulator asked Google to stop ad campaigns spreading misinformation regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on YouTube videos.
In response, Google took action against disinformation campaigns about Russia’s invasion and blocked the YouTube channels of Russia Today (RT) and Sputnik in Europe at the request of the European Union.
Roskomnadzor later protested YouTube’s decision, demanding the immediate removal of all restrictions on the official accounts of Russian media (including Sputnik and RT) across Europe.
Source: www.bleepingcomputer.com