A lot is illegal when you’re a mass media outlet in Russia. You can’t talk about the ways people kill themselves, you can’t disseminate extremist materials, you can’t promote illegal drug use, and so on. To enforce all these prohibitions, Moscow has a special state enterprise that reports to Roskomnadzor: the Main Radio Frequency Center “GRChTs” federal state unitary enterprise. The outfit employs hundreds of people to scan the Internet every day, analyzing hundreds of websites with pornography, obscenities, and other illegal content, which is flagged by a special automated system that also monitors the country’s print media. Meduza takes a closer look at this facet of Russia’s online censorship and speaks to some of the people directly engaged in this work.
On August 22, 2017, Republic chief editor Maxim Kashulinsky got a message informing him that his publication was being cited for breaking the law. Routine government monitoring of the outlet’s website, it turned out, had turned up an embedded YouTube video of a rap battle between “Oxxxymiron” and “Slava KPSS” that contained obscene language.
The notification meticulously documented exactly which forbidden phrases the rappers used in their battle and when. Admittedly, the censors didn’t make it very far into their analysis of the contest: the report sent to Kashulinsky focused entirely on obscenities uttered in the first five minutes of the YouTube video, before any actual rapping even began.
“The first phrase that put the monitoring service on alert [sounded like] ‘We’re getting fucking registered!’” Kashulinsky explained on Facebook in August (the “registration” referred to an account at Tinkoff Bank, which sponsored the event). “In full accordance with this appeal, there was a document with screenshots drawn up and an attached (1) DVD copy of the battle. The document and the DVD were put into a clear plastic folder [by GRChTs] and sent to Roskomnadzor.” The regulatory agency then formally registered the infraction and notified Kashulinsky.
Three months later, in mid-November, Republic received another injunction from Roskomnadzor based on the results of monitoring by GRChTs. This time, the censors determined that a reader’s comment on an article about bicycles becoming a problem in modern cities “contained signs of the abuse of the freedom of mass information.” The reader’s comment contained an obscenity that means “careless ineptitude” and translates roughly to “shitshow.”
Roskomnadzor sends these notices to media outlets based on the results of monitoring. Infractions can result in fines for publications, and the agency has the right to file a lawsuit revoking the publishing license of any media outlet that receives more than one warning within a year. Roskomnadzor’s job, however, is to punish violators, not to carry out the monitoring work itself. Another outfit is responsible for finding extremism, pornography, obscenities, and other banned content in Russia’s online and printed media: the Main Radio Frequency Center (GRChTs), a state unitary enterprise subordinate to Roskomnadzor.
GRChTs is also the enterprise that’s connected to the felony case launched against several high-ranking Roskomnadzor officials in the fall of 2017. Press Secretary Vadim Ampelonsky, legal department director Boris Edidin, and Alexander Veselchakov (who acts as an advisor to the head of GRChTs and is believed to serve as Roskomnadzor head Alexander Zharov’s chief of staff) are accused of hiring fictitious staff and pocketing their salaries.
On October 25, 2017, a court fined Kashulinsky 5,000 rubles ($85) in the rap battle case. “Simona” aka “Monolisa”
The Main Radio Frequency Center (GRChTs) state unitary enterprise was formed from two agencies that regulated Russia’s radio frequencies. In May 2014, the government made GRChTs responsible for monitoring compliance with legislation related to Roskomnadzor’s activities. At first, the enterprise’s Central Federal District branch handled this work, until it was formally merged in April 2017 with the rest of GRChTs. Every year, Roskomnadzor signs a new contract with GRChTs to “analyze and research the content disseminated in the mass media.” In 2017, this contract was worth 216 million rubles ($3.7 million).