human rights activist – about why Durov is acquitted for blocking “Smart Vote”
The founder of the Telegram messenger Pavel Durov finally spoke out about the blocking of the Smart Voting bot during the election days of the new State Duma. As Durov said. “Allowing Telegram to be blocked for all Russians to give a political party two extra days to campaign after elections have already begun is like sacrificing a pawn queen in a chess game without a clear winning strategy,” he said. We discussed this statement with Mikhail Klimarev, director of the Internet Protection Society.
“In the new circumstances, most likely, Roskomnadzor could block Telegram, it would be quite painful. He can block anything at all. <...> In the place of Internet corporations, I would think about control over Roskomnadzor, because now their actions are completely unpredictable, they can act in any way, they can blackmail, as we see, and they do it. <...>
The same sovereign Runet, about which they talked a lot – they built it. Russia is moving towards the Chinese model of Internet governance – and now the Internet in Russia is worse than the Chinese one. <...>
There is another option, which, probably, should also be worn – these are people. As we know from Google and Apple, there were threats to take company employees hostage, according to Google – there were about 100 to 200 people in Russia, Google employees. Telegram actually has more such people than Google, because it is a company with Russian roots, there are quite a lot of people needed to service and program all this, in the end, the relatives of these people are most likely also live in Russia, and there could be pressure in this form. Why they are silent now, they do not say anything is also a very simple answer in fact: they have not yet had time to evacuate everyone. I think we need to wait a bit for the resolution of the whole situation. “– said Klimarev.
Photo: Igor Ivanko / Kommersant
State Duma elections in 2021
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