The relevant committee recommended approval in the first reading of the bill on the removal of illegal content

The bill of deputies Boyarsky and Alshevsky was recommended by the information policy committee.

On July 18, 2017, the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications recommended approving in the first reading a bill requiring social networks to remove illegal content, which was introduced the day before by deputies Sergei Boyarsky and Andrei Alshevskikh (United Russia).

A bill amending the federal law “On Information,” as well as accompanying amendments to the Administrative Code, were submitted to the State Duma for consideration on July 12. Boyarsky and Alshevskikh proposed forcing social networks with an audience of more than 2 million people in Russia to open representative offices in the country and oblige them to remove defamatory, xenophobic, inflammatory and other illegal content within 24 hours at the request of users. According to the idea of ​​the deputies, social networks should report quarterly to Roskomnadzor on the work to remove such information, and pay multimillion-dollar fines for violations.

The government commission formulated a number of significant complaints about the text of the bill, although it supported its concept.

We also believe that the bill is not clearly formulated and needs to be changed. In its current form, the mechanism proposed by deputies to remove information from social networks risks becoming a tool of censorship.

Sources

• The bill on deleting information from social networks was approved by the State Duma committee // Vedomosti. 2017. July 18.