Russian court slaps Google, Meta with massive fines

Trying to silence the West. It's a No Go Picture Ba Ba.

Trying to silence the West. It's a No Go Picture Ba Ba.

Russia is silencing what it considers hate and degeneracy, while in the west Google is silencing science, medicine, and one political party.

This actually sounds like extortion. All of these companies just provide platforms for people themselves to create and distribute content. Like, would you sue the phone company if someone cursed at you in a call. I'm sure that some courts on this planet will find that to be perfectly reasonable.

Again Putin leading the world with good, common sense leadership.

@Michael Machida

Actually it is mostly the West trying to silence Russia, as can be seen from the fact that Russia Today is banned in the U.S., U.K., Germany, Latvia and Ukraine.

Russia, a second tier economy totally dependent on petroleum exports, is not vital to any non-Russian businesses. Pack up and leave…….who needs them?

1glennToday  07:04 pm JST

Russia, a second tier economy totally dependent on petroleum exports, is not vital to any non-Russian businesses. Pack up and leave…….who needs them?

So are most oil producing countries, should they pack up and leave too? And what are you going to put in to your gas tank?

@1glenn

Yeah, tell Google and Meta to pack and leave, what's the problem, what they are waiting for? Tell NASA to stop bying Russian rocket engines. Tell Boeing to stop buying Russian titanium. You'll be very surprised by the results.

In spite of this thread's pro- and anti-Russia comments, if I was the CEO of either of those tech companies, I would instruct staff to place an announcement on all websites serving Russia that simply stated that in 48 hours all service would be cut, all servers disabled. Let Russia go back to the dark ages. It's not the Russian court that made the decision. It was Putin. And if you don't believe that, go to your local library and borrow "Putin's People". Then, and only then, try making an intelligent comment.

And vote me down, in the process.

Let Russia go back to the dark ages.

Dark ages? In your world Google and Meta must be the only sources of information on the web... Sad, really.

Russia will do exactly what FB, Twitter and Google did to Trump and Conservatives. Ban them and teach them a lesson. They can not dictate which data or opinions should be made available.

As for Google and Facebook aka Meta, the avatars of a virtually new age, the content allowed is often questionable and the moderators (to use a JT term) aka censors aka 'gaekeepers' seem to be a dysfunctional algorithm or seriously flawed individuals lacking in morals & ethics.

The reference to, Putin's People, a tome lauded by FT (she works there), the Economist and other organs of the western version of the politburo - is amusing. The Bushniks and Clintonites ineffective governance led to the Gore-Talbott-Summers troika, vested with authority for the development and execution of Russian policy in an elite and uniquely insular policy-making group without accountability to the normal checks and balances within the executive branch. It was the Bush and more so, the Clinton administration that created the current Putinization of Russia.

The policy decisions that emerged were marked with the personal biases and predispositions of these three individuals. Their small circle soon became an echo chamber, reinforcing their own views and excluding independent information, analyses, and recommendations from the national security, foreign policy, and intelligence professionals throughout the U.S. government. 

The unorthodox "troika" institutional arrangement produced fundamental flaws in U.S. policy toward Russia from 1993 forward.

The Clinton administration's failure to focus its full attention on replacing Communism with the basic legal elements of the free enterprise system created conditions in which organized crime flourished. Without such essentials as legislated protections for private property, a modern commercial code, and honest, efficient, and speedy courts to enforce property rights, the "privatization" of government entities in Russia predictably resulted in chaos. It destroyed Russia and put in place a gangster state.

One might examine the actual instruments of governance within the US federal government - Putin's machinations are amateurish and hardly bear comparison to the evil fomented by the USA.

And voila, the flying wedge of techno-capitalism runs amok in a foreign state with the guise, it is just a platform or we simply are an informational enterprise mining digital markets.

Google and Meta aka Facebook, seek to escape all manner of regulation and responsibility for content, no matter the sovereign state within which they operate.

@TrevorPeace, I wouldn't give 48 hours notice. That is asking for trouble. Just pull the plug and immediately securely erase (over write files seven times with zeros) or even reformat all the servers so there no possibility of recovering any lost data. Giving 48 hour warning only invites the FSB to take action. Leave them with a fait accompli.

Google , Meta, FB think they are as big and important as governments, so they are scrutinised by

governments.......... but actually non-governmental world control should not exist.

Good on you Russia. At least someone is standing up to these multinationals that have potential to control thought processes!

Google , Meta, FB think they are as big and important as governments, 

To an extent they are. They have more money, more resources and more influence than many national governments do. For better or worse people are often more willing to believe what they read on Google, FB and other social media than what their government officials say. In some ways they are indeed more powerful than most of the world's governments.

Russia is too late to the game of building its "iron curtain" against outside social media. No one is fooled by mysterious deaths and illnesses of Putin adversaries. Only the Chinese and N. Koreans are mostly disillusioned by the propaganda from its government. Some of these tech/media firms are more powerful and have further reach than Putin. They do not need to have offices in their country to connect to its people. Russia has nothing to hold over the West other than a threat of disruption and inconvenience for its neighbors (another NK). Acting out so people will listen to them because they are no longer respected or relevant.

Putin is acting out because he and Russia are loosing their grip and influence.

Compared with US penalties on oversea banks or companies, Russia only charged small amount.

Oh Russia and china have silenced the west .

They are the tech leaders.

USA and UK won't acknowledge it tho too embarrassing.

Oh Russia and china have silenced the west .

They are the tech leaders.

I've seen both country's best and neither are the tech leaders of the world. A lot of Russia's best military hardware ended up in the US after the fall of the Iron Curtain and it is mostly kludge. Russia in particular falls further behind every year as their best young minds make their way to the west where the pay and living conditions are so much better. If you look at photos of engineering teams in the US you see a large range of ages, young new engineers learning the ropes and older engineers who are their mentors and team leads. When you see photos of Russian engineering teams it's all old elderly men. It's a striking difference. Russia isn't creating new engineers. Meanwhile the Chinese are missing the old experienced engineers and team leads. The people who should be their most experienced engineers and program managers were run off by the Red Guards and ended up either never finishing school, in some cases they were killed by the Red Guards or they went to the west like my wife. So you have a lot of young engineers from fairly new engineering schools of questionable quality (professors want a "red envelope" for a passing grade, admissions staff also want their red envelope to enroll you in the classes you need, my wife has some first hand experience with this) working projects with few or no old hands who have been around for decades making things successfully. If they are lucky they have mentors and team leads from western partners (the very reason Chinese law requires western firms to take a Chinese partner to manufacture there) but you can see from their products they lack experience and make a lot of mistakes. I've seen the PLAN up close and personal and you can tell from looking at how they build their ships they haven't fought a naval war in well over a century.

@Desert

So who would be responsible for something like this, is it the "young new engineers learning the ropes" or "older engineers who are their mentors and team leads."?

US Hypersonic Missile Fails Anew in Third Trial

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2021/12/20/us-hypersonic-missile-fails-trial/amp/

So who would be responsible for something like this, is it the "young new engineers learning the ropes" or "older engineers who are their mentors and team leads."?

US Hypersonic Missile Fails Anew in Third Trial

I have been following this program, the AGM-183 ARRW, as well as the joint Army / Navy Common Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) that will be fielded in about a year and a half. The Air Force and Lockheed Martin are trying to do something truly difficult. They want a rocket booster that can be launched from an airplane and hit Mach 20 before releasing their HGV, which is different from the C-HGB. The Army / Navy program uses a ground launched ballistic missile that fly a normal ballistic profile well into space before releasing their HGV. The HGV picks up it's great speed descending into the atmosphere. For the sake of reference, the fastest any air launched vehicle has gone so far was the X-43 which managed a rocket propelled speed of Mach 9.6 but only for a few seconds. The longest sustained flight over Mach 5 goes to the X-51 Waverider which flew at Mach 5.1 for a bit over 3 minutes powered by air air breathing scramjet. Mach 20 is faster than an ICBM re-enters the atmosphere and more than twice as fast as any air launched anything has ever gone.