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Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] writes:

COLLECTED BY Arthur Bot - NEEDS EDITING

Arthur T Knackerbracket [soylentnews.org] has found the following story [aljazeera.com]:

After protests, watchdog says entities bought ad tools to spread information about unsanctioned demonstrations.

Tens of thousands of people on Saturday staged what observers called the country's biggest political protest [aljazeera.com] in years, defying a crackdown to demand free elections for the legislature of the capital, Moscow.

Multiple YouTube channels broadcast the event live. Some videos attracted more than 50,000 people according to organisers. In contrast to previous protests [aljazeera.com], the authorities had approved this rally.

It said Russia would consider a failure by Google to respond to the request as "interference in its sovereign affairs" and "hostile influence (over) and obstruction of democratic elections in Russia".

If the company does not take measures to prevent events from being promoted on its platforms, Russia reserves the right to respond accordingly, Roscomnadzor said in its statement [rkn.gov.ru], without giving details.

Over the past five years, Russia has introduced tougher laws requiring search engines to delete some search results, messaging services to share encryption keys with security services and social networks to store Russian users' personal data on servers within the country.

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