Russia limits access to Facebook: “violates human rights and freedoms”

It was in the air, especially after the measures that Meta took in response to the situation in Ukraine: Russia has decided to restrict access to Facebook. A statement from Roskomnadzor, the state media control agency, has harshly and clearly condemned the work of the social networkdefining it as harmful “human rights and fundamental freedoms, as well as the rights and freedoms of Russian citizens“.

The casus belli is, on this front, the restriction made by Facebook on February 24 against the official accounts of four Russian media outlets: the television channel Zvezdathe news agency RIA Novosti and Internet sites Lenta.ru And Gazeta.ru. Russia announces that it has asked Meta for an explanation of the intervention, also asking for the removal of the restrictions imposed, but without obtaining an answer. And he adds to the dose by pointing out that he has recorded, as of October 2020, 23 cases of Russian media censorship by Facebook.

In the reconstruction provided by the Kremlin, this is a type of provision that violates federal law No. 272-FZ in relation to Russian Internet resources and media: also in this case, therefore, Russia claims to be responding to enemy fire .

For these reasons the Attorney General, in agreement with the Foreign Ministry, has decided to adopt measures for “partially restrict access in the form of traffic slowdown“At the moment we still don’t know exactly how hard this limitation is, and what effects it is having in practice.

In the history of humanity, technology is an element that has profoundly determined the outcome of wars. And today, with the conflict in Ukraine, which is putting the bloc of the Western superpowers at loggerheads with the Eastern one, we are facing a war that is unprecedented in terms of the technologies involved. Military offensives have long been preceded, escorted or followed by cyber attacks – Anonymous has already targeted Russia – but beyond what happens behind the scenes there is a digital surface where most of humanity now moves, communicates, exists in a different and exponential way, unprecedented, with the possibility of joining a global network of contents and contacts.

We are talking, it is understood, of the internet and in particular of social platforms, crucial places for directing the moods of the masses. And on the other hand, already in these days we have become familiar with a war mediated by the usual television screen and also – and above all – by that of smartphones that are not only transmitters of a message, but on the other side of the fence constantly produce it. : and therefore in the news we see the grainy low-resolution videos recorded with the phone by citizens and shared on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok.

The control of information is fundamental to hold the reins of power, and today the channels in which information can travel and spread have multiplied, and it is difficult to sustain a propaganda narrative, of regime, when the highly populated spaces of social networks live and grow. under another jurisdiction, in an area where it is therefore difficult to exercise direct control over the contents and their dissemination. And for this reason, in an emergency scenario, they end up in the eye of the storm.