More than 7 million adolescents are involved in destructive groups in social networks, with an increase in involvement of 2 million people a year. Such data was voiced during the forum “Digital Hygiene. Youth in the Network”, held on March 28, 2019 in Moscow, President of the GC InfoWatch, co-founder of JSC “Kribrum” Natalya Kasperskaya.
In March 2018, at a meeting with female entrepreneurs, Russian President Vladimir Putin instructed to intensify the actions of state bodies, business and the public to combat the negative impact on social networks.
Meanwhile, experts say that it is rather difficult to fight destructive groups, because they constantly mutate. In addition, social networks are not responsible for their activities, and Roskomnadzor can block only the entire social network what is difficult to do.
The co-founder and president of JSC “Kribrum” Igor Ashmanov complained that the Internet platforms by all means resist any regulation, “because they believe that later this screw will be tightened.” In particular, he told that 10 years ago he had to “flatten” one of the major search engines for distributing child porn.
“They resisted. They have a business, and they do not want to give a reason to introduce responsibility for the content. Unfortunately, this is an objective reality,” he stated.
In his turn, the head of the Commission of the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation on the development of the information community, the media and mass communications, President of the Foundation for the Protection of National Values, Alexander Malkevich, noted that social networks “want to be rich and good.”
“For them, the state is bad. Because the conditional Ivan Ivanov wrote a bad post and the state will punish him, because the social network does not want to delete this post. In the West they delete it, but with us you can write what you want,” he is indignant.
Alexander Malkevich is sure that social networks should introduce moderation on their own. In addition, he drew attention to the need of using the international experience during the fight against dangerous content on the Internet.
Laws aimed at protecting children and minors from harmful information on the Internet appeared in the United States almost 20 years ago, said Alexander Malkevich. Nowadays, such laws exist in many countries around the world. Some of them are presented in the TOP-15 laws protecting children and minors from harmful information on the Internet, published on the Foundation’s website.
“When individuals in our country tell us how in Russia the screws allegedly being tighten, I would like to draw attention to similar practices in European and other countries. The US continues to introduce new laws, even at the state level”, he stressed, drawing attention to the rigidity of the laws.
Thus, according to Alexander Malkevich, in Germany, for example, the law provides for a fine of up to 50 million euros if the social network does not “clean out” illegal extremist content on its own.
The representative of “Molodezhki ONF”, Artem Kuritsyn, noted that in order to create positive content on the Internet, the need for which has been widely spoken a long time, the organization tries to concentrate on what is happening in real life. For example, an action on street football, the purpose of which is to interest young people who have too much free time and spend it on the Internet.
“In some regions we saw that guys in felt boots were playing football. That is, those who are in search of self-realization are often subject to destructive influence. The final was held in Sochi. Two teams won (in the older and younger age groups): one is from Kamchatka, and the second is from the village in Karachay-Cherkessia. There are only 1,200 people in this village,” he said.
The activist is confident that thanks to this action, he was able to distract the guys from the “street”, giving them that competitive moment, which is often not enough in their lives.
“This is important. Without this moment everything become boring. The youth is starting to look for it”, – he added.
In his opinion, the susceptibility to the influence of destructive content is connected with the absence of this competitive moment in children. At the same time, Artem Kuritsyn noted that it is difficult to create positive content.
As the responsible secretary of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Antiterrorist Centre of the CIS Member States, Alexander Smirnov, stressed “it is necessary to ensure the safety of children, including from the content distributed by terrorist organizations that actively use the Internet.” In his opinion, this can be facilitated by strengthening communications and combining the efforts of various state and public structures, the media, the blogging community.
