Google, beware: Telegram creator defects to Russia
The State Duma is planning a round table with the participation of the creator of VKontakte and Telegram, Pavel Durov, to discuss opposition to the American companies Google and Apple, which levy a 30% tax on the sales of mobile applications, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We know that now Telegram, within the framework of the current legislation, freely operates on the territory of the Russian Federation, we are happy about this,” said press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov. – We are also glad that company representatives take part in discussions and events...
The development of the IT field is one of the priorities for the President of Russia, you know, there is a whole list of instructions that he recently signed, and, of course, this is one of the highest priority sectors. When the most talented, the most successful take part in discussions in this area, it benefits us all.”
This is how the official representative of the Kremlin reacted to the participation of representatives of the IT industry in Tatarstan with the participation of Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and Telegram Vice President Ilya Perekopsky.
The latter, in particular, called on Russia to join the fight against the 30% tax that American monopolists Google and Apple levy on sales of digital products for mobile phones.
At the end of June, Roskomnadzor announced the end of blocking of the Telegram messenger in Russia due to the fact that Pavel Durov expressed his readiness, together with the Russian state, to “counter terrorism and extremism.”
However, the blocking can hardly be called successful - Durov’s team managed to bypass restrictive measures, and the Telegram service continued to operate in Russia, increasing its popularity, despite the official ban.
Before the conflict was resolved, it became known that Durov had failed with the new project of the TON (Telegram Open Network) blockchain platform - in the USA he, in fact, had “squeezed out” the business.
Now the experience of the Telegram team in bypassing blocking (or vice versa) can already serve the interests of the Russian state - for example, both Roskomnadzor and Durov have a long-standing “grave” on the social network Facebook. The creator of Telegram pointed out that Facebook and Instagram have been making money on advertising for scammers acting on his behalf for more than a year. Durov threatened to sue.
However, this is only a special case - the problem is much broader. As is known, American social networks Facebook, Youtube and Twitter ignore provisions on the localization of databases in Russia.
On the servers of these popular resources, located on the territory of the United States and its allies, a huge amount of personal information concerning Russian citizens is stored and, presumably, carefully processed.
The LinkedIn service has already been blocked in the Russian Federation for ignoring the requirements. Twitter and Facebook entered into a lively correspondence with Roskomnadzor, demonstrating “a willingness to discuss the problem.”
It seems that the Americans are betting on stalling for time. After all, at the first stage they face punishment under an administrative article, providing for fines that are ridiculous for giants.
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