For over 20 years, the Russian blogosphere has been developing in a free-for-all environment. Having gained a critical mass of users, it has become a significant element of the media environment. This can be confirmed, for example, by financial indicators: according to the Association of Bloggers and Agencies (ABA) and the IMPeople platform, at the end of the first half of 2024, the volume of the influencer marketing market in Russia on the platforms VK, YouTube, Twitch, Telegram and Instagram (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia) amounted to 21.3 billion rubles. This is a third more than the same period last year. In this regard, the government's desire to de-anonymize and take control of content on Telegram and YouTube is not surprising.
In social networks that actively cooperate with the authorities (VK, Odnoklassniki), content is already moderated, and the banned Facebook (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned) and Instagram have lost a lot of audience and are no longer of former interest to the state. An important step along this path was taken in the fall of 2022, when a law was passed on mandatory labeling of bloggers' advertising. Some authors came out of the shadows and began reporting their income and what exactly they advertise to Roskomnadzor. According to indirect estimates, about 40% of all content authors began to do so - mainly owners of channels with a large number of subscribers.
Having given bloggers time to get used to the new rules, Roskomnadzor already issued 52 decrees in the first months of 2024 and assessed fines totaling more than 3.5 million rubles for untimely or irrelevant information about product advertising. Among those brought to administrative responsibility were Nastya Ivleeva, Ilya Varlamov (recognized by the Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent), Alisher Morgenstern (recognized by the Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent), as well as intermediaries who were engaged in promoting businesses on the channels of famous influencers, administrators of communities on social networks and regional media. I think that next year the amount of fines will increase by an order of magnitude. Moreover, in a year or two the process of monitoring and imposing sanctions will be automated thanks to the use of artificial intelligence.
Recently, the state took another important step towards introducing censorship in the blogosphere, requiring account owners with more than 10,000 subscribers to register and provide their passport data to Roskomnadzor. So far, we do not have detailed information on how exactly such applications should be submitted, but we can assume that it will be filling out a questionnaire similar to other government services we are accustomed to. For those who do not do this, from November 1, 2024, there will be a ban on advertising, collecting donations and reposting content. The advertiser, in turn, will be able to check the blogger's registration in the Roskomnadzor registry. From January 1, the agency will require the administration of social networks to block unregistered bloggers. I think that fines will also be introduced for advertisers who cooperate with anonymous authors.
Problems for bloggers
The law on registration of content authors was clearly adopted in a hurry and does not yet solve the issue of control over the blogosphere. It will only add problems to law-abiding users, but will not help in deanonymizing unscrupulous sellers of prohibited goods and services.
For example, the authorities still have few levers of pressure on YouTube. The social network administration simply ignores requests from the Russian authorities and remains in a gray zone - on the one hand, despite the slowdown in work, the service has not yet been banned. On the other hand, the owner of YouTube, Google, does not comply with the requirements of Russian legislation. And it is not a fact that this dilemma will end with a ban on YouTube.
However, compliance with the requirements of the new law depends not only and not so much on the interaction of officials with the administrations of social networks. Blocking one anonymous channel does not create any special problems for offenders - they buy and quickly promote new ones using black methods of promotion. For example, it is common practice for channels selling prohibited goods to be deleted at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but then immediately revived through mailings to their existing customer base.
The problem for honest bloggers will be that they will no longer be able to repost their partners' content. What if the person they reposted breaks the law? It is quite difficult to "check" your partner in the Roskomnadzor registry every time.
To effectively promote a blog, the author must either be a famous person or build horizontal connections within the platform so that partners and other channels repost it as often as possible. This is how an organic audience is accumulated. If content from a channel cannot be reposted due to the author's failure to comply with the new law, this greatly limits its growth.
It is quite possible that the rules for regulating the blogosphere will still be finalized. And here the Russian authorities can be helped by the experience of other countries, and the "unfriendly" United States and EU members are unlikely to be among them.
An example for regulators
There are many countries in the world that have made significant progress in censoring the blogosphere. I will give just a few examples of regulatory measures.
Uzbekistan: at the moment, the country has the strictest internet censorship. All internet providers are required to lease information transmission channels from the state monopoly, which allows the authorities to control all internet traffic. However, as part of economic and social liberalization, a presidential decree was signed abolishing this monopoly from January 1, 2025;
India: in 2021, the government introduced the Information Technology Regulation Rules, which impose obligations on social networks to monitor and remove content recognized as harmful. This has led to increased supervision of bloggers and media personalities in the online environment. The country has a content filtering system NETRA - it analyzes voice and text messages, tweets, emails in real time;
Saudi Arabia: the law on web publications introduced a rule according to which a license must be obtained to post posts. This requirement extends to operators as well, who are required by law to be Saudi citizens or residents, meet certain educational and behavioral standards, and hire government-approved editors. Violations can result in fines and possible jail time for content deemed harmful by the government;
China: The Golden Shield Project is a special security system. The Chinese government maintains strict control over the internet with the Great Firewall, which censors a wide range of legally prohibited topics. Bloggers and content creators face severe penalties for violating content rules;
Turkey: The regulatory environment is determined by the Internet Law, which has been in place since 2007. In 2020, an amendment was passed allowing the government to block sites that refuse to remove content deemed illegal within 24 hours. The government has expanded its control over social media, including arrests of bloggers critical of the government.
In the next two to three years, I see a hybrid scenario developing in Russia, based on a mixture of the practices of Turkey, China and Saudi Arabia, that is, countries whose geopolitical positioning overlaps with Russia’s, with which some exchange of experience has already been established.
I believe that we will take from Turkish legislation a system for monitoring destructive and illegal content, as well as notifying sites about the need to restrict access to a specific resource within 24 hours. We should also expect the use of AI-based solutions for monitoring and identifying violators of the law.
Some things are already being implemented from the Chinese experience - the government is trying to restrict access to VPN service providers that are not registered in Russia. This is similar to the logic of the “Great Chinese Firewall” - the primary goal is not to completely censor Internet resources, but rather to make access to them as difficult as possible. If users are sufficiently motivated, they will be able to bypass the bans and access information using paid services. It's just that there are relatively few such people in both China and Russia.
We will probably take the content licensing system in some areas from Saudi Arabia. It seems to me that the most sensitive sectors will be singled out, for work in which bloggers will be required to obtain a license. Perhaps this will be medicine, education and psychology, which is consistent with the government's course on combating infobusinessmen.
The state is now beginning to rapidly regulate a fast-growing market, to which no rules apply at all. Haste in this matter can reveal many problems and create additional difficulties for conscientious content authors. But in any case, in two or three years we will live in a completely different media space.
In social networks that actively cooperate with the authorities (VK, Odnoklassniki), content is already moderated, and the banned Facebook (owned by Meta, which is recognized as extremist and banned) and Instagram have lost a lot of audience and are no longer of former interest to the state. An important step along this path was taken in the fall of 2022, when a law was passed on mandatory labeling of bloggers' advertising. Some authors came out of the shadows and began reporting their income and what exactly they advertise to Roskomnadzor. According to indirect estimates, about 40% of all content authors began to do so - mainly owners of channels with a large number of subscribers.
Having given bloggers time to get used to the new rules, Roskomnadzor already issued 52 decrees in the first months of 2024 and assessed fines totaling more than 3.5 million rubles for untimely or irrelevant information about product advertising. Among those brought to administrative responsibility were Nastya Ivleeva, Ilya Varlamov (recognized by the Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent), Alisher Morgenstern (recognized by the Ministry of Justice as a foreign agent), as well as intermediaries who were engaged in promoting businesses on the channels of famous influencers, administrators of communities on social networks and regional media. I think that next year the amount of fines will increase by an order of magnitude. Moreover, in a year or two the process of monitoring and imposing sanctions will be automated thanks to the use of artificial intelligence.
Recently, the state took another important step towards introducing censorship in the blogosphere, requiring account owners with more than 10,000 subscribers to register and provide their passport data to Roskomnadzor. So far, we do not have detailed information on how exactly such applications should be submitted, but we can assume that it will be filling out a questionnaire similar to other government services we are accustomed to. For those who do not do this, from November 1, 2024, there will be a ban on advertising, collecting donations and reposting content. The advertiser, in turn, will be able to check the blogger's registration in the Roskomnadzor registry. From January 1, the agency will require the administration of social networks to block unregistered bloggers. I think that fines will also be introduced for advertisers who cooperate with anonymous authors.
Problems for bloggers
The law on registration of content authors was clearly adopted in a hurry and does not yet solve the issue of control over the blogosphere. It will only add problems to law-abiding users, but will not help in deanonymizing unscrupulous sellers of prohibited goods and services.
For example, the authorities still have few levers of pressure on YouTube. The social network administration simply ignores requests from the Russian authorities and remains in a gray zone - on the one hand, despite the slowdown in work, the service has not yet been banned. On the other hand, the owner of YouTube, Google, does not comply with the requirements of Russian legislation. And it is not a fact that this dilemma will end with a ban on YouTube.
However, compliance with the requirements of the new law depends not only and not so much on the interaction of officials with the administrations of social networks. Blocking one anonymous channel does not create any special problems for offenders - they buy and quickly promote new ones using black methods of promotion. For example, it is common practice for channels selling prohibited goods to be deleted at the request of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but then immediately revived through mailings to their existing customer base.
The problem for honest bloggers will be that they will no longer be able to repost their partners' content. What if the person they reposted breaks the law? It is quite difficult to "check" your partner in the Roskomnadzor registry every time.
To effectively promote a blog, the author must either be a famous person or build horizontal connections within the platform so that partners and other channels repost it as often as possible. This is how an organic audience is accumulated. If content from a channel cannot be reposted due to the author's failure to comply with the new law, this greatly limits its growth.
It is quite possible that the rules for regulating the blogosphere will still be finalized. And here the Russian authorities can be helped by the experience of other countries, and the "unfriendly" United States and EU members are unlikely to be among them.
An example for regulators
There are many countries in the world that have made significant progress in censoring the blogosphere. I will give just a few examples of regulatory measures.
Uzbekistan: at the moment, the country has the strictest internet censorship. All internet providers are required to lease information transmission channels from the state monopoly, which allows the authorities to control all internet traffic. However, as part of economic and social liberalization, a presidential decree was signed abolishing this monopoly from January 1, 2025;
India: in 2021, the government introduced the Information Technology Regulation Rules, which impose obligations on social networks to monitor and remove content recognized as harmful. This has led to increased supervision of bloggers and media personalities in the online environment. The country has a content filtering system NETRA - it analyzes voice and text messages, tweets, emails in real time;
Saudi Arabia: the law on web publications introduced a rule according to which a license must be obtained to post posts. This requirement extends to operators as well, who are required by law to be Saudi citizens or residents, meet certain educational and behavioral standards, and hire government-approved editors. Violations can result in fines and possible jail time for content deemed harmful by the government;
China: The Golden Shield Project is a special security system. The Chinese government maintains strict control over the internet with the Great Firewall, which censors a wide range of legally prohibited topics. Bloggers and content creators face severe penalties for violating content rules;
Turkey: The regulatory environment is determined by the Internet Law, which has been in place since 2007. In 2020, an amendment was passed allowing the government to block sites that refuse to remove content deemed illegal within 24 hours. The government has expanded its control over social media, including arrests of bloggers critical of the government.
In the next two to three years, I see a hybrid scenario developing in Russia, based on a mixture of the practices of Turkey, China and Saudi Arabia, that is, countries whose geopolitical positioning overlaps with Russia’s, with which some exchange of experience has already been established.
I believe that we will take from Turkish legislation a system for monitoring destructive and illegal content, as well as notifying sites about the need to restrict access to a specific resource within 24 hours. We should also expect the use of AI-based solutions for monitoring and identifying violators of the law.
Some things are already being implemented from the Chinese experience - the government is trying to restrict access to VPN service providers that are not registered in Russia. This is similar to the logic of the “Great Chinese Firewall” - the primary goal is not to completely censor Internet resources, but rather to make access to them as difficult as possible. If users are sufficiently motivated, they will be able to bypass the bans and access information using paid services. It's just that there are relatively few such people in both China and Russia.
We will probably take the content licensing system in some areas from Saudi Arabia. It seems to me that the most sensitive sectors will be singled out, for work in which bloggers will be required to obtain a license. Perhaps this will be medicine, education and psychology, which is consistent with the government's course on combating infobusinessmen.
The state is now beginning to rapidly regulate a fast-growing market, to which no rules apply at all. Haste in this matter can reveal many problems and create additional difficulties for conscientious content authors. But in any case, in two or three years we will live in a completely different media space.
