IT exceptionalism? Putin calls out Big Tech’s ‘ideological divide’, widespread censorship

NOVO-OGAREVO (TASS): Big Tech’s efforts to restrict user access to various Internet platforms are a serious challenge, President Vladimir Putin said at a meeting with leaders of parliamentary factions on Wednesday.

He responded to the recent statements made by Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma (lower house), who put the spotlight on Big Tech’s violation of freedom of speech.

“What you said about these so-called platforms, IT companies, is a serious challenge not only for us – we see what has happened in the [United] States,” Putin noted. According to him, it is quite obvious that such an “ideological divide” runs throughout the world.

“If they behave like that in their country, then how will they treat others, given that they consider themselves exceptional? This is a serious issue. And, of course, we should think about how to deal with it,” the Russian leader reasoned.

In January, Volodin instructed the State Duma Foreign Affairs Committee to urge international organizations to review the state of freedom of speech in the United States since some social media accounts of then-President Donald Trump and his supporters were locked down after the Capitol unrest in Washington DC.

Twitter permanently banned Trump’s account, citing the outgoing president’s violation of its terms of service and the possibility that Trump could use the platform to incite violence.

Moreover, Apple and Google deleted Parler, a microblogging and social networking service popular among Trump supporters, from their app stores, while Amazon decided to drop Parler from its cloud hosting services.