"Big Brother" has become very large: Russia and China recently demonstrated their intentions to drown out freedom of speech and expression in the network, writes The Washington Post in an editorial.
"Moscow and Beijing are erecting their attacks on freedom of speech to new, absurd levels," believes the publication.
"On April 10 in China, the state supervisory authority in the field of radio and television decided to permanently close the Neihan Duanzi application, mostly mobile, where users shared jokes and videos with hidden meaning," reports The Washington Post. At the end of the summer, the application had 21.7 million users - mostly young people who called themselves "friends-jokers".
The ban was called, according to the authorities, "obscene direction and vulgar style" Neihan Duanzi. "The head of the company-owner of the application made an apology for the fact that the content" did not meet the key socialist values ??". In other words, this culture of jokes did not amuse the cones from the CCP. "Friends-jokers" formed a cohesive community, and the threats that they can act in concert may have been enough to scare the party that retains a monopoly on power, "reads the article.
In turn, in Russia on April 16, Roskomnadzor ordered the providers to block the Telegram's messenger, since he refused to provide the FSB with access to encryption, which would allow the special services to read the messages. In an attempt to close Telegram, Russian authorities blocked for the first time large packets of IP-addresses, which caused chaos in the Russian Internet.
Telegram managed to stay online.
An activist from Pussy Riot Maria Alekhina held a protest action at the headquarters of the FSB, launching paper airplanes into the sky. "She was detained and sentenced to one hundred hours of compulsory labor for violating the law on public assemblies," the newspaper reports..
"What tells us about the leaders of Russia and China the fact that they consider jokes, videos and paper airplanes threats?" - the Washington Post asks..