With rising criticism against the Russian president within his country, especially after the rapid developments of the arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in recent weeks, one of the world's most popular video-sharing apps is reportedly helping Vladimir Putin silence voices he does not like.
"Russia is now pioneering a 'landmark' approach to censorship that relies on both pressuring platforms to police their own content and an innovative use of technology to ensure they comply."
— Bianna Golodryga (@biannagolodryga) April 30, 2021
Tiktok played a significant role in protester turnout...https://t.co/RWMffQZ3L5
Even though Tiktok's viral posts have repeatedly backed a number of political protests around the world, it seems that discussions between Russian and Chinese officials have successfully stopped anti-Putin videos from reaching large audiences on the platform owned by China's ByteDance.
According to the South China Morning Post, a number of popular Russian users have noticed that the reach of their content has been limited by the platform's moderators once they started speaking up against the Russian government, which has affected their income as content creators.
TikTok is among the global social media companies under pressure to remove anti-government posts in Russia. Russia is now pioneering a "landmark" approach to censorship that relies on pressuring platforms to police their own content and an innovative use of technology to comply. https://t.co/Qiz2Ogu5kh
— nhalli (@nv12biz) May 2, 2021
Such reports correspond to earlier ones hinting at a Russian request to China for help managing related content on Tiktok, the app widely used in Russia and said to have had encouraged anti-government protestors to take to the streets in previous campaigns.
Since last January, thousands of Russians have been protesting in a number of cities across the country in support of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who has been in jail since his return to the country in the early weeks of 2021.
In August 2020, Navalny had survived a poisoning attempt using a Novichok nerve agent which had caused his evacuation to Germany for medical treatment.
