Putin setting up punishment in a very autocratic way for spreading “Fake News.” Sounds familiar…and helps Putin to control the narrative.
Keep all controversial information away from the Russians…is what Putin does to keep his country on a short leash, and allows for imprisonment or worse.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a new law which will allow the punishment of individuals and online media for spreading what Russia calls “fake news” and information which “disrespects” the state.
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Matthew Rojansky, director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, told NPR the new laws in Russia are “politically significant” because the Internet “remained a relatively free space for political expression, including oppositional to the regime, even as the state media, and all other forms of media, be it print, or television, or radio, were largely shut down by the state, over the last 20 years.”
He says some factions in Russia’s government have pushed for more restrictions. “The idea that there should be a Russian internet is very convenient for those whose main goal is control, and that’s where you come back to the siloviki, the security apparatus of Russia, including the legacy organizations of the KGB which were uncomfortable to begin with, with the idea that Russians were fully connected to a global information space that was in their view a tool of the United States,” Rojansky said.
The Moscow Times reports, “Tougher Internet laws introduced over the past five years require search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services and social networks to store users’ personal data on servers within the country.”