29.03.2024

Clubhouse Blocks Pro-Kremlin TV Host Following User Complaints

The app, which allows users to communicate via real-time voice recordings, became increasingly popular after the platform hosted a viral chat between SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev.

Pro-Kremlin spin doctor Vladimir Solovyov has been banned from the Clubhouse app after attempting to start a discussion on LGBT issues in Russia.

The conservative talk show host was banned from the audio-based social media platform Monday shortly after he created a discussion room titled “Why didn’t Russia’s queer revolution take off?”

“This is very funny,” Solovyov tweeted following the ban. “Clubhouse is scared of my mere appearance on the network — that’s all you need to know of that outlet’s ‘free speech values’.”

According to information obtained by Russkii Marketing Telegram channel, the ban was initiated not by app moderators but by users who filed multiple complaints against the discussion room that Solovyov created.

«Of course! Are you scared of me, little ones?» Solovyov said in response to the news of user-initiated complaints.

Clubhouse is now Russia’s most-downloaded free iOS app, the App Annie app analytics company confirmed to the Izvestia newspaper Monday.

Out of an estimated global usership of 3 million people, the invite-only app is estimated to have up to 50,000 active users in Russia, Izvestia noted in the same report, citing investment analyst Ruslan Pichugin.

2020 Was Warmest Year in Russia’s History

Last year was the warmest in Russia’s recorded history, the national weather service said this month as global temperatures reached record highs.

Russia’s weather service said 2020 was among the country’s 14 hottest years, all of which were recorded in the 21st century. Average temperatures across the country’s 11 time zones were 2 degrees Celsius or more above normal, Russia’s Meteorological Service announced on Jan. 6.

The highest anomaly of 7 C above normal was observed on Siberia’s Taymyr peninsula, the northernmost part of the Asian continent, it said. Temperatures in European and Asian Russia were around 3 degrees above normal.

“An absolute maximum has been reached for the first time in the entire 130-year history of regular weather observations in every federal district of the country, with the exception of the North Caucasus,” the Meteorological Service said.

The Urals and Siberian federal districts beat previous temperature records by 1.5 C, while Moscow’s record average of 8 C in 2020 was also 3 degrees above normal.

The world as a whole saw average temperatures of 14.9 C in 2020, rivaling a record set in 2016 and closing what the UN called the warmest decade ever recorded.

Russia, the world’s fourth-largest greenhouse gas emitter with an economy heavily dependent on oil and gas, is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the world due to its vast Arctic territories.

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