The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as ''Roskomnadzor'' (RKN), is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling and censoring Russian

mass media Mass media include the diverse arrays of media that reach a large audience via mass communication. Broadcast media transmit information electronically via media such as films, radio, recorded music, or television. Digital media comprises b ...

. Its areas of responsibility include electronic media, mass communications, information technology and telecommunications, supervising compliance with the law, protecting the confidentiality of personal data being processed, and organizing the work of the radio-frequency service.

History

In March 2007, the authority—then a subdivision of the Cultural Ministry of Russia called "Russian Federal Surveillance Service for Compliance with the Legislation in Mass Media and Cultural Heritage Protection" (''Rosokhrankultura'')—warned the ''

Kommersant (, , ''The Businessman'' or Commerce Man, often shortened to Ъ) is a nationally distributed daily newspaper published in Russia mostly devoted to politics and business. The TNS Media and NRS Russia certified July 2013 circulation of the daily ...

'' newspaper that it should not mention the

National Bolshevik Party The National Bolshevik Party (, NBP) operated from 1993 to 2007 as a Russian political party with a political program of National Bolshevism. The NBP became a prominent member of The Other Russia (coalition), The Other Russia coalition of oppos ...

on its pages, as the party had been denied official registration. The Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications was re-established in May 2008. Resolution number 419, "On Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications", was adopted on 6 February 2008. In December 2019, media criticized the service's choice of experts who are performing analysis of referred publications to assess their compliance with regulations. A number of experts recruited by ''Roscomnadzor'' are associated with pseudo-scientific and sectarian movements, including HIV/AIDS deniers, ultra-conservative, anti-vaccination and

alternative medicine Alternative medicine refers to practices that aim to achieve the healing effects of conventional medicine, but that typically lack biological plausibility, testability, repeatability, or supporting evidence of effectiveness. Such practices are ...

activists. Three such experts—Anna Volkova, Tatyana Simonova and Elena Shabalina—assessed lyrics of popular rapper

Egor Kreed Egor Nikolayevich Bulatkin (, born June 25, 1994), better known by his stage names Egor Kreed, KReeD, and Egor Split, is a Russian rapper, singer, and songwriter. He began his career under his stage name "''KReeD''" in 2014, but later change ...

in which they found "mutagenic effect", "satanic influence" and "psychological warfare". Also in 2019, ''Roskomnadzor'' published the first iteration of the "list of information resources who had in the past been spreading unreliable information" including a number of social media groups and media websites accused mostly of incorrectly reporting on a single incident in Dzerzhinsk in June 2019. After nationwide pro-Navalny protests in 2021, ''Roskomnadzor'' fined seven social media companies for not removing pro- Navalny videos: "

Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

Instagram Instagram is an American photo sharing, photo and Short-form content, short-form video sharing social networking service owned by Meta Platforms. It allows users to upload media that can be edited with Social media camera filter, filters, be ...

Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...

TikTok TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...

VKontakte (short for its original name ''VKontakte''; , meaning ''InContact'') is a Russian online social media and social networking service based in Saint Petersburg. VK is available in multiple languages but it is predominantly used by Russian speake ...

Odnoklassniki Odnoklassniki (), abbreviated as OK or OK.ru, is a social networking service and online video sharing website primarily in Russia and former Soviet Republics. The site was launched on March 4, 2006 by Albert Popkov and is currently owned by VK. ...

and

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

will be fined for non-compliance with requirements to prevent the dissemination of calls to minors to participate in unauthorized rallies" it said in a statement published on its website. On 10 March 2022, 820 GB of Roskomnadzor data was leaked and published, with the hacking group

Anonymous Anonymous may refer to: * Anonymity, the state of an individual's identity, or personally identifiable information, being publicly unknown ** Anonymous work, a work of art or literature that has an unnamed or unknown creator or author * Anonym ...

claiming responsibility. Anonymous engaged in several cyberattacks against Russian websites as the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, , starting the largest and deadliest war in Europe since World War II, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, conflict between the two countries which began in 2014. The fighting has caused hundreds of thou ...

occurred. Because of its actions that supported the invasion of Ukraine, Roskomnadzor has been sanctioned by Ukraine, the European Union and Canada. In February 2023, it was revealed that Belarusian Cyberpartisans had hacked and leaked Roskomnadzor data to journalists. The leak exposed surveillance and censorship programs and ways to discredit journalists.

Purpose

''Roskomnadzor'' is a federal executive body responsible for control, censorship, and supervision in the field of media, including electronic media and mass communications, information technology and communications functions control and supervision over the compliance of personal data processing requirements of the legislation of the Russian Federation in the field of personal data, and the role of co-ordinating the activities of radio frequency service. It's an authorized federal executive body for the protection of human subjects of personal data. It is also the body administering Russian

Internet censorship Internet censorship is the legal control or suppression of what can be accessed, published, or viewed on the Internet. Censorship is most often applied to specific internet domains (such as ''Wikipedia.org'', for example) but exceptionally may ...

filters. It also designs and implements procedures of Russian Autonomous Internet Subnetwork, like inventory of Russian Autonomous Systems, alternative DNS root servers in Russian National Domain Name System, controls local ISPs interconnect and Internet exchanges. The main goal is to provide access to the Russian Autonomous Internet Subnetwork even after disconnection or isolation from the global

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

( Sovereign Internet Law).

Enforcement actions

Russian_Provider_Restricting_Access_to_the_Site

On 31 March 2013, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

'' reported that Russia was "selectively blocking heInternet". In 2014, during the

annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation In February and March 2014, Russia invaded the Crimea, Crimean Peninsula, part of Ukraine, and then annexed it. This took place in the relative power vacuum immediately following the Revolution of Dignity. It marked the beginning of the Russ ...

, ''Roskomnadzor'' had a number of websites criticising Russian policy in

Ukraine Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the List of European countries by area, second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which Russia–Ukraine border, borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the nor ...

blocked, including the blog of

Alexei Navalny Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny (, ; 4 June 197616 February 2024) was a Russian Opposition to Vladimir Putin in Russia, opposition leader, anti-corruption in Russia, corruption activist and political prisoner. He founded the Anti-Corruption Found ...

, Kasparov.ru and . Also, on 22 June 2016

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

was entirely blocked for a couple of hours because of a poker app. As of April 2024, 200,000 websites related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine are blocked. ''Roskomnadzor'' is blocking around 150

virtual private network Virtual private network (VPN) is a network architecture for virtually extending a private network (i.e. any computer network which is not the public Internet) across one or multiple other networks which are either untrusted (as they are not con ...

(VPN) services and 700 websites involved in advertising VPNs.

GitHub

In October 2014,

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

was blocked for a short time. On 2 December,

was blocked again for some satiric notes, describing "methods of suicide", which caused major tensions among Russian software developers. It was unblocked on 4 December 2014 and GitHub had set up a special page dedicated to ''Roskomnadzor''-related issues. All content was and remains available for non-Russian networks.

Russian Wikipedia

On 5 April 2013, it was confirmed by a spokesperson for ''Roskomnadzor'' that Wikipedia had been blacklisted over the article "

Cannabis smoking Cannabis smoking (known Colloquialism, colloquially as smoking weed or smoking pot) is the inhalation of smoke or vapor released by heating the flowers, leaves, or extracts of Cannabis (drug), cannabis and releasing the main Psychoactive drug ...

" ( Курение каннабиса) on the Russian Wikipedia. On 18 August 2015, an article in

Russian Wikipedia The Russian Wikipedia () is the Russian language, Russian-language edition of Wikipedia. As of , it has :ru:Special:Statistics, articles. It was started on 11 May 2001. In October 2015, it became the sixth-largest Wikipedia by the number of ar ...

about

charas Charas is a cannabis concentrate made from the resin of a live cannabis plant (''Cannabis sativa'' either ''Cannabis indica, ''Indica' subspecies or ''Sativa'' subspecies) and is handmade in the Indian subcontinent. The plant grows wild thr ...

( Чарас (наркотическое вещество) ) was blacklisted by ''Roskomnadzor'' as containing propaganda on narcotics. The article was then rewritten from scratch using UN materials and textbooks, but on 24 August it was included in the list of forbidden materials sent to

Internet provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non ...

s of Russia. As Wikipedia uses the

HTTPS Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is an extension of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). It uses encryption for secure communication over a computer network, and is widely used on the Internet. In HTTPS, the communication protoc ...

protocol to encrypt traffic, effectively all of the site with all language versions of Wikipedia was blocked in Russia on the night of August 25. On 1 March 2022, ''Roskomnadzor'' threatened to block access to

over the article " Вторжение России на Украину (2022)" ("Russia's invasion of Ukraine (2022)"), claiming that the article contained "illegally distributed information" including "reports about numerous casualties among service personnel of the Russian Federation and also the civilian population of Ukraine, including children". ''Roskomnadzor'' made similar threats on 31 March, demanding that Wikipedia remove any information about the invasion that is "misinforming" Russians or it could face a fine of up to 4 million

ruble The ruble or rouble (; rus, рубль, p=rublʲ) is a currency unit. Currently, currencies named ''ruble'' in circulation include the Russian ruble (RUB, ₽) in Russia and the Belarusian ruble (BYN, Rbl) in Belarus. These currencies are s ...

s (approximately

US$ The United States dollar (Currency symbol, symbol: Dollar sign, $; ISO 4217, currency code: USD) is the official currency of the United States and International use of the U.S. dollar, several other countries. The Coinage Act of 1792 introdu ...

49,000).

''The Daily Stormer''

In 2017, the

neo-Nazi Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazism, Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and Supremacism#Racial, racial supremacy (ofte ...

website ''

The Daily Stormer ''The Daily Stormer'' is an American neo-Nazi commentary and message board website that advocates for a Second Holocaust, second genocide of Jews. It is part of the alt-right movement. Its editor, Andrew Anglin, founded the outlet on July 4, ...

'' was briefly moved to a Russian

domain name In the Internet, a domain name is a string that identifies a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control. Domain names are often used to identify services provided through the Internet, such as websites, email services, and more. ...

, but ''Roskomnazdor'' subsequently acted to remove its access, and the site moved to the

dark web The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets ( overlay networks) that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communica ...

On 16 April 2018, ''Roskomnadzor'' ordered Russian ISPs to block access to the instant messenger

Telegram Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas pi ...

, as the company refused to hand over the

encryption key A key in cryptography is a piece of information, usually a string of numbers or letters that are stored in a file, which, when processed through a cryptographic algorithm, can encode or decode cryptographic data. Based on the used method, the key ...

s for users' chats to Russian authorities. The information watchdog applied the method of mass IP address blockings, hitting major hosting providers, such as

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

, and disrupting hundreds of Russian internet services. ''Roskomnadzor'' had to abandon this approach, but failed to implement any other means to stop Russian users from accessing Telegram. In the end, ''Roskomnadzor'' and other government structures set up their own channels in the "outlawed" app. In mid-2020 Roskomnadzor officially gave up on trying to block Telegram.

Twitter

On 10 March 2021, ''Roskomnadzor'' started to "slow down"

for users in Russia, attributing the decision to the platform's failure to remove content deemed illegal by the Russian government. This action occasionally caused Russia's key websites, including ''Roskomnadzor'' itself, to stop working. It also led to malfunctions of major commercial services, such as Qiwi payment system, and blocked some users from accessing Yandex, Google, and YouTube. In addition, along with Twitter, ''Roskomnadzor'' throttled access to numerous websites with domain names ending in "t.co" (t.co being among the Twitter domain), thus affecting no fewer than 48 thousand hosts, including

Russia Today RT, formerly Russia Today (), is a Russian state-controlled international news television network funded by the Russian government. It operates pay television and free-to-air channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as pro ...

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

Steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

. On 26 February 2022, following the

, Twitter said that access to the platform was being restricted to some users in Russia. On 1 March, ''Roskomnadzor'' again slowed access to Twitter, accusing the company of failing to remove what it called "fake posts" about the "special operation". On 28 April 2022, Twitter was fined 3 million rubles (US$41,000) after being sued by ''Roskomnadzor'' for not removing content that included instructions for how to prepare and use

molotov cocktail A Molotov cocktail (among several other names – ''see '') is a hand-thrown incendiary weapon consisting of a frangible container filled with flammable substances and equipped with a Fuse (explosives), fuse (typically a glass bottle filled wit ...

s against Russian armored vehicles.

Google

In April 2022, ''Roskomnadzor'' fined Google more than 7 billion rubles (US$94 million), for not removing what it claimed was illegal content from YouTube.

TikTok

In April 2022, ''Roskomnadzor'' drew up a protocol and a court in Moscow fined TikTok two million rubles (US$27,000) for not removing content related to the

LGBT LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...

community.

Chess.com

On 23 April 2022, ''Roskomnadzor'' blocked the

online chess Online chess is chess that is played over the Internet, allowing players to play against each other. This was first done asynchronously through PLATO and email in the 1970s. In 1992, the Internet Chess Server facilitated live online play via t ...

website

Chess.com Chess.com is an internet chess server and social networking website. One of the largest chess platforms in the world, the site operates on a freemium model in which some features are available for free, and others are available via subscription ...

in Russia because of two articles that were critical of the

and links to those articles replacing the flags of all Russian users on the website. The general prosecutor's office only wanted the two aforementioned anti-war articles banned, but because Chess.com uses the

protocol, this blocked the entire website.

Notes

References

External links

* {{Government of the Russian Federation Politics of Russia Censorship in Russia 2008 establishments in Russia Government agencies established in 2008 Information operations and warfare Communications authorities