Maintaining a Single Digital Landscape in the Face of a Struggle for Digital Sovereignty

Maintaining a Single Digital Landscape in the Face of a Struggle for Digital Sovereignty

03 Jun, 15:00–16:15

Increasingly, Russian media outlets and private users are encountering censorship on major international online platforms (such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) and their accounts are blocked, along with access to materials. Late last year, the State Duma passed a law enabling countermeasures to be taken when Russian media resources are censored. These include blocking and slowing internet traffic, and issuing fines to transgressors. Remarkably, a great many countries under various systems have been affected by dictates imposed by the tech giants’ platforms, including those ideologically close to the US. How is this situation likely to develop, and could this result in Russia emulating China in building a “great firewall”? Do governments have the right to protect the flow of information in their countries in this way, and will this lead to the single information space becoming fragmented? Should the international community draft an international convention to regulate online companies? And will Russian companies be able to create genuine social media competitors to Google, Facebook or YouTube?









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