La libertà di parola e i social network in Russia

La storia VK, per gli amici VKontakte, il social network russo gemello di Facebook e del suo fondatore Pavel Durov al tempo della censura putiniana raccontata su Motherboard.

Pavel Durov, founder of the Russian social network VKontakte, was home alone in his apartment in St. Petersburg on a weekend when a contingent of men in camouflage uniforms knocked violently on his door. He crept to the peephole and looked at them, standing there, before moving quietly to the window, only to see more men in the same uniforms waiting outside his building. He didn't answer, even as they shouted thickly through the door. Then his phone began to ring, over and over, with calls from unfamiliar numbers.

Durov knew why they were there. Just days before, he’d received a letter in the mail from the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation, or FSB, a reincarnation of the Soviet Union's KGB, demanding that he take down VKontakte pages being used to organize protests opposing the re-election of Vladimir Putin.