For independent press websites blocked by the Russian and Belarusian authorities, it’s hard to get a foothold in the search engines. The IT giants show little willingness to talk or tinker with their algorithms.
(DW) Journalists from independent media outlets in Belarus, forced to flee due to political persecution, have complained to the European Commission that the search algorithms of Google, Meta and other major information technology companies make it difficult for them to access their content in the country.
By complying with the restrictions imposed by Minsk on the opposition press, the IT giants are said to have become “an instrument of pressure for the totalitarian and authoritarian regime against civil society”, according to an article in the Financial Times.
“It is increasingly obvious that technology companies wield enormous power. In some cases, perhaps even more than the holders of political power,” Belarusian opposition leader Svetlana Tsikhanouskaya told DW during the World Economic Forum in Davos. “It’s important for these companies to stand on the side of good and engage in promoting democratic values.”
Russian media outlets have the same problem, reports Sarkis Darbinyan, co-founder of the human rights organization Roskomsvoboda: “For us, it is clear that Google, one of the world’s largest search engines, inevitably contributes to Russian state propaganda, because in search results and recommendations to users, state-owned and government-linked media dominate.”
Search engines deflate efforts at political criticism
If a user wants to access the website of a company blocked by Moscow, the attempt fails, and the algorithm marks the link as inactive, continues the digital rights expert. As a result, the address disappears from search results, giving way to non-blocked media with similar headlines.
Lev Gershenzon, former director of the Yandex news service – Russia’s largest and most accessed search engine – and founder of the automatically generated news portal The True Story, points out another problem: “Google’s algorithms don’t take into account that authoritarian regimes invest enormous resources in artificially popularizing sites that suit them.”
Thus, the fact that Google gives so much weight to the number of hits would boost pages containing fakes and conspiracy theories, warns Gershenzon. And Darbinyan clarifies: “When the algorithm was developed, the idea was initially to prevent sites with illegal content from appearing among the results.”
Matthias Kettemann, co-director of the International Law and the Internet department at the Max-Planck Institute for Foreign Public Law and International Law, adds: “We want the platforms to remove illegal content from the web in principle – that’s important.”
“But when a state goes and abuses this – for example, by declaring any criticism of the government illegal – then there has been a violation of the law. Then you can use the same tools to make legitimate criticism disappear from the internet.”
Little interest in changing algorithms in the name of human rights
In mid-2023, Roskomsvoboda analysts and other human rights activists delivered a report on the subject to the multinational Google during the annual RightsCon global conference in Costa Rica, mediated by the American NGO Access Now. The document explains the challenges that independent media face due to restrictions by the IT giants.
“Following the imposition of sanctions against Russia, several IT companies have closed their offices, distribution centers, services and assistance in the Russian Federation, as well as limiting their offerings to Russian users.” These closures make the work of independent operators progressively more difficult and result in Russian society becoming increasingly isolated from state propaganda, the activists note in their report.
Lev Gershenzon has been working on this problem for about a year: according to his observations, “so far there has been no public dialog with the Big Tech companies”. Darbinyan adds that Google “is not particularly interested in changing its algorithms because of human rights groups”. Meta, for its part, would be more open to civil society.
Kettemann believes that Google and other multinationals are “between a rock and a hard place” in Russia, Belarus and China, as they have committed themselves to complying with the authorities’ demands in order not to put their employees in danger.
If the European Commission forces Google, under penalty of sanctions, to stop blocking independent media sites, the platform could be banned altogether in Russia. “And that, in turn, would result in serious losses; on the one hand of money that could be earned, but also for the communications ecosystem.”
Fighting fakes from the word go
For Darbinyan, Google has effectively abandoned the Russian market: “Paid products no longer work in Russia because of the problems with Visa and Mastercard. Google hasn’t even tried to re-establish payment methods for user services or the monetization of Russian channels, in order to support independent media and bloggers who live off advertising revenue.”
In order to side with the independent press in Russia and Belarus, the search engine would have to change its algorithm on a global scale. This is not only very expensive, but “could seriously damage its SEO [search engine optimization], with which thousands, if not millions of companies operate on the Internet,” explains Roskomsvoboda’s co-founder.
The Financial Times reports on EU officials in Brussels who admit that they have no legal basis for imposing fines or legal measures against IT companies that do not help journalists and writers critical of the regime, in Belarus or other countries.
Matthias Kettemann assesses the situation: “Formally, the European Commission has few possibilities with regard to the conduct of an American company in a third country. But as part of the implementation of the Digital Services Act, it can of course monitor platforms that are also active in Europe, at least in terms of their activities in the region. In this context, it can also make observations on how platforms should behave in non-European countries.”
Lev Gershenzon is convinced that imposition by politicians and representatives of society is “a bad way to go”, as they don’t understand the specifics of Big Tech’s work. The ideal would be for the tech conglomerates themselves to recognize the problem, become aware of their own responsibility and take an active stance: “But we don’t see that yet, and the fight against fakes and propaganda only takes place verbally.”
*** Translated by DEFCONPress FYI Team ***