Global Voices Online

Russia: A champion of social networking?

Monday, July 6th, 2009 @ 16:29 UTC

by Vilhelm Konnander

Countries:: Russia
Topics:: Cyber-Activism, Internet & Telecoms, Software & Tools
Languages:: English

This post is also available in:

Español:

Rusia: ¿Un campeón en redes sociales?...

LJ user Russian-Cyberspace.org comments on Russians becoming increasingly skilled at social networking on the Internet at the same time as the country is experiencing an increasing divide between citizens' level of access to the Internet.

Start the Conversation

Recent Links also in Eastern & Central Europe

On November 29, thousands of people in Moscow went out on the streets to protest against the construction of a new trading center. This center would replace the “Cherkizovski” market [ENG], which was closed down in June because of many illegal activities on its premises. The photos of the protest can be found here [RUS].

The Russian Coordination Center for the new national Cyrillic domain .RF stopped the application process for new domains. Anti-cybersquatting measures turned out to be infective and the center plans to review the rules of submission process, Russian news agency Prime-Tass reported [RUS]. It's not clear what will happen to the registered domains. Some sources claim that all previously approved domains will be deleted.

A new law “On Ensuring Access to Information about Activities of Government Bodies and Municipal Authorities” [RUS] will require, among other things, creating public Internet terminals all around Russia. But netizens question [RUS] the feasibility of the law.