OREANDA-NEWS. The Public Chamber of the Russian Federation on Thursday presented the results of a study of violations of Russian legislation by leading Internet platforms in terms of the dissemination of destructive content. 

The reason for the study was the law that came into force on February 1, which obliges social networks to independently identify and block content recognized as prohibited in Russia. Most of these materials were found on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. The fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh places were taken by Instagram, VKontakte, TikTok and Odnoklassniki.

Facebook, according to the study, committed 15 acts of censorship against Russian media and companies (YouTube - 28, Twitter - 11). In addition, the initiative group counted 112 materials on drug trafficking there (52 on YouTube, 12 on Twitter), 1900 materials with information recognized by the courts as prohibited and extremist (YouTube - 4420, Twitter - 100), 68 cases of insulting state symbols (YouTube - 8, Twitter - 25), 124 fakes (YouTube - 81, Twitter - 12) and 87 calls to suicide (YouTube - 35, Twitter - 32).

The position of the platforms in the rating was also influenced by the amount of illegal content that was not deleted, the presence or absence of a representative office in Russia, the willingness to interact with the regulator and the speed of reaction to complaints from users and supervisory authorities.

In addition, the "politicization" of social networks was taken into account - namely, how many times accounts that did not violate the legislation of the Russian Federation were blocked or restricted access. Researchers qualified such actions as political censorship.

At the same time, they noted that on some topics, the removal of destructive content by platforms has become more effective. For example, the number of publications about illegal drug trafficking on Twitter decreased from 150 to 12, and on Facebook - from 200 to 112. Also, there were fewer articles with banned court and extremist information on Facebook - 1900 instead of 2700. On YouTube, this indicator increased - from 3400 to 4420.