The exit strategy from Russia was formed after Russia invaded Ukraine in February and included suspending all ads by March and blocking Play Store app sales by May. After that, Russian internet users have only been able to use free services from Google, like Search, Gmail, Maps, or YouTube.
This week, a Russian court ordered the tech giant to pay its biggest fine yet for failing to remove "fake" content. It will have to pay $374 million if it doesn't restrict content against Russian interests. Inciting young people to join mass protests is one of the examples.
The company knew a fine was coming and did not respond to the request for comment. Maybe it didn't know how big a fine was. The new fine would be around 15 percent of the company's annual turnover, but it was warned that it would be 5 to 10 percent. Ars didn't get a response to their request to clarify the percent of the fee.
We don't know if the order will be paid or resisted. The first revenue-based fine of its kind in Russia was ordered by the Russian government. Since then, there have been some other small fines reported.
Additional penalties were issued for the systematic violations of Russian law by the internet giant.
AdvertisementPart of the company's continued resistance to turnYouTube into a Russian propaganda tool is its failure to remove content. The private nonprofit RadioFree Europe/RadioLiberty, which strives to deliver news in countries where free press is restricted, reported that the Russian government ordered media to only publish information from official sources. The conflict was referred to as a war by the Western governments, but it was not allowed to be reported as such by the media.
The definition of propaganda is limited to one political viewpoint. Russia's media restrictions help control the narrative on the Ukraine war. He wanted to make it a crime to spread false information about the military in Russia, which could result in imprisonment up to 15 years.
More than 9000 channels relating to the Russia-Ukraine war were taken down by YouTube. Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer, told the Guardian that it removed more than 70,000 videos from the platform because they violated the site's terms of service.
Mohan said that most of the videos that were removed were coming from the Russian government and that the invasion of Ukraine was a liberation mission. The policy of stopping hate speech and preventing Holocaust-denial videos from being posted was broken by failing to acknowledge a violent event.
Mohan told the Guardian that there is a major violent events policy and that includes denial of major violent events. What is happening inUkraine is a violent event. We took unprecedented action because of that policy.
The unprecedented action went against Putin's order to only publish media from official sources. Putin said on Monday that access to foreign hi-tech products was being deliberately closed down. He doesn't want to bend to tech companies' pressure to end the war.
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