Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko recently signed a bill sanctioning certain Russian companies and entities, forbidding them to operate in Ukraine. The list of banned Russian businesses includes popular social networking platforms Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, as well as several offerings from the Yandex Group, and the Mail.ru Email platform. The reaction from some, to put it mildly, was not good.
On the face of it, this certainly looks like censorship. Many of the Moscow press pack, who are responsible for covering events in the wider region from Moscow, commented negatively. The spokesperson for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zakharova, weighed in, Putin’s spokesperson Dimitry Peskov called the move “unfriendly” and he made that comment without a hint of laughter, due to his uncanny ability (perfected over may years) to deliver nonsense and falsehoods with a deadpan expression.
As a rule of thumb, if you ever find yourself on the same side of an argument as Peskov and Zakharova, you are very likely to be on the wrong side of the argument.
Setting aside some of the practical limitations to the proposed ban, such as the fact that it can easily be gotten around, the logic behind the move was actually pretty sound, the problem was that once again Ukraine ended up looking bad by failing to communicate their reasoning, thus leaving others to make assumptions about what was going on, and that is where the most problematic block in communications exists for Ukraine right now. A proactive communications attitude is essential, it has been necessary for a long time already, and it STILL does not exist.
Reasons for the ban
We can all accept that there is a de facto state of war between Ukraine and Russia. Equally, we can all accept that said war is “hybrid” in nature, it involves many aspects, and one of those aspects is most certainly informational warfare. Ukraine is a target of a sustained information campaign, emanating from Russia. These are solid statements that cannot be refuted. Russian military doctrine states that informational warfare is a fundamental part of their toolkit, Russian “media” personalities have admitted that they are, by extension, a wing of the military machine.
Russia’s interference in the affairs of other countries, which are limited to information campaigns and not direct military intervention such as in Ukraine, are well known. It is ridiculous to think that Ukraine is not a target of the informational element to Russia’s overall war, and plain stupid to suggest that Ukraine should in any way limit their response to this factor of Russian aggression. This is how Ukraine should have announced their ban on these networks, businesses, sites, and tools.
A proactive communications attitude would have led with this explanation prior to announcing the ban, and thus avoided the negative publicity Ukraine got for what amounts to nothing more than Ukraine defending itself from an element of attack.
Vkontakte is a tool used by many people in Ukraine, a Russian language copycat version of Facebook that for years grew popular because it also permitted sharing of copyrighted content. Ever since this social media platform gained a strong foothold in the former Soviet Space, it became an object coveted by the Kremlin, who, over time, acquired it. The founder of Vkontakte sold his shares in the business to parties close to the Kremlin, so, in virtually every relevant way Vkontakte is now something that the FSB have significant access to and control over.
Currently, there are interesting investigations ongoing as to how information shared by users of Facebook was in turn used by parties such as Cambridge Analytica and AggregateIQ and SCL Elections to influence the outcomes of both the Brexit referendum and the U.S. presidential election. Now, imagine not a third party doing what it can to obtain and then use some data amalgamated by Facebook, but, imagine the FSB actually controlling Facebook, and having complete access to all of the data. Now you’re starting to see the dangers of Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki.
Google search results are a thing many people do not correctly understand. It’s widely assumed that you type in a topic and Google gives you the “best” answers. That’s true, of course, Google search is an excellent product, but what the “best” search result for me is and what the “best” Google search result for you is may very well be totally different.
Google’s search engine technology has relied from day one on a technique that tailors the results you get based on an algorithm – that approach transformed the world of search engines. Essentially, a 30-year-old guy in Barcelona is not going to see the same results on searching an identical term that a 62-year-old lady from Birmingham would see. Their personalized results are selected for them (as a result of the algorithm) according to what Google knows about that individuals’ age and location and hobbies and habits and preferences. This problem with this is that it feeds an information echo chamber, but that’s another argument.
Yandex has a suite of products that it offers, the base tool for entering Yandex is a search engine. Imagine if that search engine, and so the search results you see, were controlled by the Kremlin. Now you’re starting to see the dangers of Yandex. If the Kremlin controls the results you get out of a search, imagine the kind of deliberately destructive disinformation you’re likely to get exposed to.
Google offers a fabulous, and free, Email service. The way in which Google can offer such a brilliant free product is to monetize it through other means. Again, the key here is data. Google doesn’t have people sit and manually trawl through the Emails flowing through the system it provides, the information you transmit via Gmail is essentially private, but, Google is recognizing keywords contained in your Email communication.
I don’t believe that Google has any nefarious intentions about how it may employ the troves of information it is collecting. It (again) is used to target certain messages and advertisements that it believes may appeal to you – for example if you’ve just had a flight confirmation sent to your Gmail inbox, it’s highly likely that adverts for holiday car hire will appear next time you visit a website that uses Google Ads as a revenue stream.
Now imagine that an Email system isn’t operated by a well regulated and transparent company, imagine an Email system that is not subject to and compliant with the laws of a decent country, but instead, imagine an Email system owned by individuals close to the regime of an aggressive state who have proven themselves time and time again to be untrustworthy. Now you’re starting to see the dangers of Mail.ru.
Ukraine’s recent bans on these systems and platforms when examined properly, was entirely rational, it should probably have happened a long time ago in fact, but when Ukraine communicated what they were doing, they totally failed to communicate why they were doing it. Some commentators suggested that Ukraine was, “again” in their estimation, shooting itself in the foot over this communications block, in part they’re right, but not because they have blocked dangerous external communications structures, Ukraine shoots itself in the foot because of the internal block on understanding the need for a better, more proactive, communications policy.
