Meduza: How the Russian authorities forced the country’s top news aggregator to purge unwanted stories. “On August 15, 2019, top lawmakers in Russia’s State Duma said they will consider new legislation that would restrict foreign citizens’ right to own major Russian websites. The announcement came after an inaccurate story (about Russia possibly banning the sale of some older cars) reached the top of Yandex’s news aggregator.”
Russia
Reuters: Russia tells Google not to advertise ‘illegal’ events after election protests
Reuters: Russia tells Google not to advertise ‘illegal’ events after election protests. “Tens of thousands of Russians staged what observers called the country’s biggest political protest for eight years on Saturday, defying a crackdown to demand free elections to Moscow’s city legislature. Multiple YouTube channels broadcast the event live.”
Cops and corgis: New Russian social media bot puts riot police where you least expect them (Meduza)
Meduza: Cops and corgis: New Russian social media bot puts riot police where you least expect them. “FreeOmon is a bot account based in the social network Telegram. Its sole function is to add Russian riot police to preexisting images. Any user who sends the bot an image file immediately receives a new-and-improved, highly secured version in return. “
Rapsi News: E-mail user identification bill submitted to Russia’s lower house of parliament
Rapsi News: E-mail user identification bill submitted to Russia’s lower house of parliament . “A group of members of the Federation Council introduced a bill on e-mail user identification to the State Duma. The document was published Tuesday on the database of the parliament’s lower house.”
ZDNet: Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization project and more
ZDNet: Hackers breach FSB contractor, expose Tor deanonymization project and more. “Hackers have breached SyTech, a contractor for FSB, Russia’s national intelligence service, from where they stole information about internal projects the company was working on behalf of the agency — including one for deanonymizing Tor traffic.”
TASS: Lithuania’s court rules to block Russian news agency Sputnik’s web portal
TASS: Lithuania’s court rules to block Russian news agency Sputnik’s web portal. “Vilnius District Administrative Court sanctioned to block the Lithuanian web portal of the Russian news agency Sputnik. The Radio and Television Commission that is subordinate to Lithuania’s parliament and controls the activity of radio stations and TV broadcasters reported about the court award on its website Friday.”
The Conversation: Russian Twitter propaganda predicted 2016 US election polls
The Conversation: Russian Twitter propaganda predicted 2016 US election polls. “In a statistical analysis published in First Monday , my team and I tracked the activity of Russian social media trolls on Twitter in the run up to the 2016 election. We then compared the fluctuating popularity of this propaganda with that of the two presidential candidates: Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump. We found that exposure to Russian propaganda may have helped change American minds in favor of Republican candidate Trump.”
