Russia sent 60% of all requests to Google for content blocking in a decade

Since 2011, the Russian authorities have demanded 123,606 times to block content on Google services. This is 60.6% of requests received by the company from all countries of the world, according to report companies about transparency.

At the end of 2013, Russia became the sixth in the total number of blocking requests since 2011, and in 2016 it came out on top, overtaking Turkey, after which it went into the lead. By the end of last year, the Turkish authorities had sent a total of about 14 thousand requests, while India and the United States – almost 10 thousand each.

In their requests, Russian officials demanded that more than 950,000 materials be removed, mainly from search results and YouTube.

At the moment, requests from Russia come mainly from Roskomnadzor. And earlier they were sent mainly by law enforcement agencies, said BBC Russian Service IT expert Grigory Bakunov.

According to Roskomsvoboda lawyer Sarkis Darbinyan, the Russian authorities consider requests to remove content to be an effective way of regulating the Russian Internet, so their number is only growing. This is also influenced by new legislative mechanisms that make it possible to require content blocking, including without court decisions.

Roskomnadzor is unhappy with Google’s policy. In May, the department threatened the corporation with limiting the speed of work in Russia, such a measure has already been applied to Twitter. The agency also threatened Google with a fine of up to 10% of its total annual revenue.

Roskomnadzor’s claims related not only to extremist materials, but also calls to participate in “illegal” protest actions.

The Russian authorities regularly fine Google millions of rubles, including because of refusals to filter search results by 100% according to the Unified Register of Prohibited Information and connect to the system.

This year the company was fined several times: May 25 – for 6 million rubles for refusing to delete prohibited information, on May 27 – by 3.5 million rubles for insufficient filtering of search results, on July 29 – for 3 million rubles due to the refusal to localize the data of the Russians, September 29 – at 6.5 million rubles for refusing to delete prohibited information.