First fine issued for sharing content on Russian ‘everything app’ MAX

The first fine for sharing illegal content on MAX, the state-controlled super app that the Russian government is hoping will supersede Telegram and WhatsApp, was issued by a court in Russia’s North Caucasus on 3 March, investigative journalism outlet Verstka reported on Tuesday.

A court in Russia’s southern Krasnodar region fined local resident Ivan Kazhan 1,000 rubles (€11) for posting an image that contained the symbols of a banned criminal organisation on MAX, Verstka said.

The photo, which Kazhan set as his profile picture, showed a tattoo that included an octogram, or an eight-pointed star, which, according to the court, is a symbol of the AUE, an underground criminal code that forbids all cooperation with the police and acts as a parallel justice system in Russian prisons. The group was banned by the Russian government in 2020.

Kazhan came under investigation in February, and admitted his guilt when interviewed by the police. The case, according to Verstka, is the first in which a fine had been issued for posting content on MAX. According to the SOVA Centre, which monitors Russian anti-extremist legislation, the majority of fines issued for social media posts are for content published on Russian platform VK.

The Russian government has been pushing MAX, a new state-backed “everything app”, as an alternative to popular privately-owned social media such as Telegram, which according to Russia’s media regulator, Roskomnadzor, will be blocked on 1 April.

The new app contains a form of spyware that can detect when a device is using a virtual private network, a feature often used to access blocked websites that is banned by the Russian government.