Amazon is being eyed by the Russian government. According to Russian state media, a Russian court fined the e-commerce giant 4 million roubles for refusing to remove content related to drug use and suicide. The fines are the first for Amazon in Russia and represent the latest in an increase of penalties by the warring country. According to reports, the Moscow-based court fined Amazon-owned twitch 8 million roubles for refusing to remove banned content. Part of the fine is said to be in response to the broadcasts of banned interviews with Oleksiy Arestovych, an adviser to Volodymyr Zelensky. witch was fined for interviewing the adviser in August. The Russian authorities claim that the interviews contained information that discredited the Russian armed forces. Journalists in the region are not allowed to refer to the war as a war. A Russian lawyer interviewing Arestovych was labeled a "foreign agent" by the Russian government. The video is no longer on twitch. Gizmodo did not get a response from the two companies. The military occupation of Russia pushed its regulators to speed up fines against U.S. based tech platforms. Russian regulators fined several companies for not storing data on Russian citizens within its borders. TikTok was fined 2 million roubles by Russia for refusing to remove content related to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer community. The government levied a $364 million fine against the company. Russian authorities slammed the hammer down on YouTube for promoting Extremism and terrorism, as well as anti-Russian propaganda, in that scenario. The company was added to the list of terrorists and extremists by the Russian authorities after they banned the service completely. According to a new report by Freedom House, Russia is partly to blame for a decline in internet freedom over the last 12 years. The annual report, titled, Freedom on The Net, analyzes and scores individual country's internet freedom on a scale of 0 to 100 by analyzing a number of factors, including potential rights violations, state imposed limits on users' internet access, and limits or banning of content Russia saw the greatest decline in internet freedom of any of the 70 countries that were measured.
Internet freedoms face challenges worldwide
In an interview with The Hill, Kian Vesteinsson said that the Russian government's invasion of Ukraine was the biggest driver of a decline in internet freedom. It has had a huge impact.
According to the report, the country restricted access to social media platforms and blocked some 5000 websites. A number of new pieces of legislation that expanded the powers of state bodies tasked with regulation of the internet were cited by Freedom House. According to Freedom House, those moves are connected to Russia's war effort.
The report states that the regime's increasing restrictions, both before and after the invasion, greatly raised the risks associated with online activism.
The reports claim that Russia has intensified its efforts to create an alternative internet called RuNet officials hope can one day be separated from global internet infrastructure.
Russia had the lowest internet freedom in the last 12 years, according to the report. China had the worst internet freedom score for the eighth year in a row. The internet freedom in the US improved for the first time in six years.
While Freedom House is well regarded among a large number of rights groups, some academic and commentators have criticized the organization for allegedly biased and opaque data collection methods. Some people accuse Freedom House of having a liberal bias. The long list of fines and prison sentences being handed out in Russia since the start of the invasion clearly indicates a move in one direction, and that move is not towards a more open and accessible internet.
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