- YouTube Russia still without state broadcasters.
- Jingoistic fine levied on Google.
- Importance of digital dissemination.
Rarely a day goes by without a malware or phishing attack identified as being perpetrated by Russian actors striking at the heart of Western intelligence agencies, large institutions, or powerful commercial interests seen to be acting contrary to Russian interests.
It’s difficult to be sure, thanks to news blackouts and bias, but it’s not an incredible assumption to make that identical Western state-backed incursions are as common as those emanating from the Russian bear. The internet and digital aggression flow both ways.
Since YouTube’s decision to suspend Russian media channels on its platform, the fine imposed on YouTube (or rather, its controlling company, Google) has been doubling. The demanded levy has now reached literally astronomic proportions, totalling more money than that owed by a galaxy’s inhabitants put together. Think of a number (20 is a good start), then add 33 zeroes. “At the current exchange rate,” Business Insider helpfully states (because currency price fluctuations matter in this context), “the fine is equivalent to about $20.6 decillion.”
Clearly, there is no way that such a fine can be imposed in reality. But what it shows is the hostility of the Russian state towards big US-based tech companies, anger that’s mixed with a sentiment familiar to many organisations outside the US – hopelessness that most actions taken against big technology companies are destined for failure.
It takes a multi-government superstate like the EU to have any influence on commercial policies drawn up on America’s West coast, and even when big tech is forced to take any notice, its battalions of lawyers move the conflict to the courts, where years of civilised debate ensue.
Russia has commitments to spending on its military – 29.4% of its total GDP in 2024 – that leave little pocket-change left over to ensure that lawyers continue to be expensively dressed. So, why not ask for the Earth?
YouTube, Russia and the battle for broadcast
The suspended accounts at the centre of this latest teacup in a storm of hyperbole are those belonging to media outlets. That’s indicative of the importance placed on internet-carried messages by every state (and, every business) to get its own version of the truth into global discourse. As Donald Trump and a generation of spin-doctors have discovered, repeat a message often enough and it becomes true by repetition and natural dissemination on social media.
Speaking to the ever-exact Business Insider, Nigel Gould-Davies, senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Russia’s demands from Google made in a domestic court were akin to “putting a dead man on trial.”
A sentiment like that is familiar to legislators from Africa to Australia to Scandinavia, and the dead man in the dock looks the same.
The difference between the Russian state and Western big technology companies is that the latter plays, just, inside the letter of local law. The Russian state prefers to make its own laws, merrily annexing and invading. But everyone produces their own version of the truth, limiting the means of ‘truth production’ by shutting off popular dissemination engines like YouTube effectively makes one’s own truth louder, and therefore more true.
As the Truth Social example shows, creating a new platform in competition with X, Meta, and Google’s YouTube only has the effect of preaching to the converted, and is a path fraught with difficulties. Worse are the effects of a single individual’s influence on a household-name broadcast platform (such as Elon Musk at X, or Vladimir Putin’s total control of state media).
Wherever we happen to consume our current affairs, the truth as we know it cannot be impartial in 2024, especially when so many of the world’s population are happy to live in a digital echo-chamber.
