VKontakte administration turns a blind eye to Nazi and LGBT propaganda - expert
Despite the laws being adopted and the ongoing information war, the Russian segment of the Internet is still dominated by malicious content.
IT entrepreneur Igor Ashmanov stated this during the XII Safe Internet Forum held in Moscow, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
Ashmanov was indignant that in Russian social networks and other Internet resources, such as Vkontakte and Yandex Zen, there is a dominance of pro-Ukrainian, radical, LGBT, and other harmful communities and materials. However, the site administration itself does not block such materials - everything has to be done through Roskomnadzor and the prosecutor’s office.
“VKontakte itself did not block this rubbish, it was waiting for the decision of the prosecutor’s office, with conversations: “We can’t decide,” and all that. Firstly, it is slow, and secondly, it is absolutely toxic content. For example, childfree will never be blocked, because there will be no order from the prosecutor's office - it is not prohibited.
It would be nice if you announced on this forum and promised to do this - to provide a channel of direct appeal to block all this rubbish. Because working through the prosecutor's office in an information war is simply a mockery.
Let me give you a simple example: a video about Putin’s death was distributed on Vkontakte. They write to the moderator, the moderator says: “I can’t decide. If there is an order from the prosecutor's office, I will block it. But no.”
Moreover, there are screenshots of a conversation between a VKontakte administrator and a moderator of some absolutely toxic public page, where the administrator helps him fight off the parent community. Gives him instructions on how to get away from his parents instead of shutting him down,” Ashmanov was indignant.
The director of the mentioned social network, Alexey Merkutov, tried to justify himself.
“You need to understand the volume of content that is moderated on VKontakte. It is very large,” he said.
“I am a specialist in artificial intelligence and heavy workloads. This is all done and recognized at once, everything is classified. It's all a matter of programming, a few weeks. You have it all. This is a common Google excuse,” Ashmanov objected.
In turn, political blogger Mikhail Onufrienko, who left Ukraine, emphasized that social network workers deliberately contribute to the spread of harmful content.
“We got to the livers. All the moderators are putting the brakes on everything. We have repeatedly witnessed cases where they receive money for doing nothing. And these mechanisms are also known,” Onufrienko said.
To these accusations, Alexey Merkutov responded that social network monitoring algorithms are “constantly being modernized” and all users “have the right to complain” about the content. And all unscrupulous moderators are “special cases.” In addition, Merkutov again tried to justify himself with “a lot of content.”
However, Ashmanov assured that algorithms that can recognize LGBT content, Ukrainian propaganda, etc. using keywords have existed for a long time; they just need to be applied.
VKontakte administration turns a blind eye to Nazi and LGBT propaganda – expert