MOSCOW, October 15 (RAPSI) – Members of Russia’s Civic Chamber inform that over 3,000 publications with content prohibited for dissemination in the territory of Russia have been registered on Google servers.

The materials have been registered by the monitoring group of the Internet Safety League; the information has been transferred to Russia’s media watchdog Roskomnadzor, the statement reads. Civic activists believe that Google and the services the U.S. company owns pursue opaque moderation policies and restrict access to legal content, what in fact amounts to violation of rights of users from Russia.

Civic activists are concerned with the practices of IT giants as to administration of the content published on the internet; these companies are not inclined to engaged in any constructive dialogue or participate in any cooperation effort; instead, they allow banned and potentially dangerous information to be disseminated across the territory of the Russian Federation, member of the Civic Chamber Commission on Development of Information Community, Mass Media, and Mass Communications Yekaterina Mizulina observes.

In his turn, member of the Civic Chamber Artem Kiryanov is of the opinion that IT giants have all necessary mechanisms needed to moderate content at their disposal; nevertheless, they use it exclusively to their own benefit.

The moderation policies of foreign social platforms is of concern not only in Russia, but across the whole world community as well, members of the Civic Chamber believe; these policies may be defined as those bordering on political censorship.

Double standards and open censorship are the phenomena constantly encountered when dealing with Western internet platforms, according to First Deputy Chair of Russia’s Civic Chamber Commission on Development of the Information Community Alexander Malkevich. Russian authorities are working on the measures to combat unlawful actions of Western IT companies, for instance, a district court in Moscow is about to hear a case against Google as to the blocking of a documentary about the Beslan tragedy by YouTube. Civic activists are striving to protect the rights and liberties of Russian nationals from the assault of U.S. monopolists, Malkevich said.