{"id":4104,"date":"2020-12-29T20:58:35","date_gmt":"2020-12-29T20:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.radiofree.org\/?p=144521"},"modified":"2020-12-29T20:58:35","modified_gmt":"2020-12-29T20:58:35","slug":"russia-needs-popular-equivalent-to-youtube-regulator-says-as-it-struggles-to-censor-platform","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2020\/12\/29\/russia-needs-popular-equivalent-to-youtube-regulator-says-as-it-struggles-to-censor-platform\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia Needs ‘Popular Equivalent’ To YouTube, Regulator Says As it Struggles to Censor Platform"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, says the country needs an alternative to YouTube, the U.S. online video-sharing platform that it struggles to censor.<\/p>\n

“Due to the absence of a direct competitor in Russia, YouTube is still irreplaceable,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement on December 29.<\/p>\n

The regulator added that there was a need for a “popular equivalent” in Russia that would reduce Russians’ dependence on foreign social media.<\/p>\n

The Kremlin is losing its grip on information dissemination inside the country as more and more Russians turn to foreign social-media sites like YouTube and Instagram for content.<\/p>\n

Russian President Vladimir Putin has been able to maintain high ratings during his two decades in power in part thanks to Kremlin control over the country’s main TV stations.<\/p>\n

An effective and popular Russian competitor to YouTube would enable the government to impair YouTube’s ability to operate inside the country.<\/p>\n

Roskomnadzor’s comments came the same day that Russia’s Investigative Committee launched a criminal case against Aleksei Navalny, the Kremlin critic who has deftly used YouTube to expose corruption at the highest levels of government.<\/p>\n

It also comes the same day that Gazprom-Media, the media arm of state-controlled natural-gas giant Gazprom, acquired a 100 percent stake in Russian video-streaming service Rutube.<\/p>\n

Gazprom-Media is Russia’s largest media company, with holdings including several leading television channels, radio stations, and print media.<\/p>\n

Roskomnadzor’s chief, Aleksandr Zharov, said work was under way to make Rutube as “convenient” as YouTube.<\/p>\n

On December 23, the State Duma approved in a final reading a bill that would allow Roskomnadzor to block websites that “discriminate against Russian media.”<\/p>\n

Roskomnadzor would be allowed to partially or fully restrict or slow access to websites found in violation of the law.<\/p>\n

The bill is seen affecting major social media such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

This post was originally published on Radio Free<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Russia\u2019s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, says the country needs an alternative to YouTube, the U.S. online video-sharing platform that it struggles to censor. \u201cDue to the absence of a\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,23,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4105,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4104\/revisions\/4105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}