The Kremlin said Tuesday it hopes Moscow will not be forced to block Western tech giants in the country but stressed that the companies had to abide by Russian law.
Russian authorities have in recent months ramped up pressure on foreign social media platforms, particularly those hosting content supporting jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
«No one wants a full ban and it would be silly to advocate for one,» President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in an interview with Argumenty i Fakty weekly.
«But it’s necessary to force the companies to follow our rules.
«We’d like to hope that it won’t come to that and that ways to resolve the conflict will be found,» he said in the interview published Tuesday.
Russia’s state communications watchdog earlier this month began disrupting Twitter services in Russia, saying the U.S. platform failed to comply with its requests to delete content.
Authorities said the content was related to child pornography, drug use and calls for minors to commit suicide.
Twitter has said it does not support «any unlawful behavior» and is «deeply concerned by increased attempts to block and throttle online public conversation.»
Russia in 2019 passed a law on the development of «sovereign internet» aimed at isolating the country’s internet from the worldwide web, a move activists said would tighten government control of cyberspace and stifle free speech.
«If you don’t want to accept our rules you cannot work here,» Peskov told the weekly. «Not a single self-respecting country will allow a company to impose its own terms. That’s not possible.»
The Kremlin spokesman also said that Putin had no media accounts and did not want to waste time keeping any.
«He does not need it,» Peskov said.
«He has relatives and loved ones who show and tell him things.»
Fake Russian-Language Tiktok Scams Popular Accounts
A fake “TikTok for Business” website has appeared in Russia that hijacks popular accounts with a fraudulent content monetization scheme, the Kommersant business daily reported Friday.
This is the first time that the widespread social media entrapment method has involved the popular Chinese short-video app, the newspaper cited the Infosecurity cybersecurity company’s leading analyst Alexander Vurasko as saying.
“Scammers send bloggers an offer to install a version of TikTok for Business with monetization capabilities, which are disabled within the social network,” Vurasko said, describing how the scheme works.
Scammers gain access to users’ login data by requiring them to register on the fake Russian-language tiktok-business.ru website, he added.
Infosecurity, a subsidiary of Russian information security service provider Softline, said tiktok-business.ru is part of dozens of imposter sites that go online every month.
“Their lifespan is small and ranges from a few hours to five to six days,” Kommersant quoted Vurasko as saying.
TikTok, which currently does not provide content monetization options for Russian users, said it has requested Russian authorities to block the scam website.
The fake website remained accessible as of Friday afternoon.
Russia has one of the world’s highest TikTok userships, estimated to have grown from 16.4 million in August to 29.3 million in December 2020.
