Navalny, who is currently in a Russian prison, said the technology was being used by the state to arrest dissidents, but also provided an opportunity to get to the truth.
The imprisoned leader of the Russian opposition, Alexei Navalnyblamed Google and Meta Platforms Inc. today for cutting advertising in Russia, a move that he said undermined the opposition and was therefore a gift to the president. Vladimir Putin.
THE Navalnyby far the most important leader of the Russian opposition, presents Putin’s Russia as a dystopian state ruled by thieves and criminals, where wrong is considered right and judges are in fact representatives of a doomed country ruled by lawlessness.
In a written speech at the Copenhagen Democracy Summit, Navalny, who is currently in a Russian prisonsaid that technology is used by the state to arrest dissidents, but also gives the opportunity to get to the truth.
“The Internet enables us to circumvent censorship,” Navalny said in a statement posted on his official blog.
“Advertising in Russia a gift to Putin”
“However, at the same time, the Google and the Meta“By stopping their advertising in Russia, they deprived the opposition of the opportunity to conduct anti-war campaigns, making a grand gift to Putin.”
Neither Google nor Meta responded immediately to a request for comment on Navalny’s reports. Both companies stopped advertising targeting users in Russia in March, just days after Russia invaded Ukraine.
Navalny won the admiration of the motley Russian opposition with his voluntary return to Russia in 2021 from Germany, where he had been treated after an attempt to poison him with a neurotoxic agent in Siberia, as shown by laboratory tests performed in the West.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied Navalny’s claims about Putin, who he says has won many elections in Russia since 2000 and remains by far the country’s most popular politician. He has denied Navalny’s claim that Russia poisoned him.
Navalny, a former lawyer who became known more than a decade ago for imitating Putin’s elite and claiming that corruption was rampant, said that its titans Silicon Valley have to answer many questions.
They will have to decide, he said, whether they are really “neutral platforms” and whether users in democracies should follow the same rules as users in oppressive societies.
“How should the internet deal with government directives, given that Norway and Uganda seem to have slightly different ideas about the role of the internet and democracy?” Navalny wondered.
“We love technology. We love social media. We want to live in a free information society. So let’s think about how we can prevent the bad guys from using the information society to lead their nations and all of us to the Middle Ages. “
