Sunday, March 13, 2022

Kremlin Threatens Google And Apple Execs In Moscow With Prison If Apps To Register Protest Votes Against Putin Are Not Removed

Daily Mail: Putin's war on social media: Russian agents threatened Google and Apple execs in Moscow with prison if they didn't remove app to register protest votes against Putin 

* Google officials say the supposed FSB agents gave an order to the female Google executive to either take the app down in 24 hours or be jailed 

* After the tech giant moved the executive to a hotel room under a pseudonym, the same agents came and visited her again to tell them they wanted it down 

* Within hours, the Smart Voting app - created by Putin opponent Alexi Navalny which allowed Russians to register protest votes against Putin - was taken down 

* An Apple employee in Moscow had received similar threats from the FSB, the successor to the KGB 

* Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began in February, Google and many other tech companies have said they'll stop doing business in Russia 

Russian agents allegedly showed up at the home of a Google executive in Moscow to clamp down on an app being used by the Russian president's biggest opponent as part of Vladimir Putin plan to shut down any internal criticism. 

Google officials say the supposed FSB agents gave an order to the female Google executive to either take the app down in 24 hours or be jailed in a never-before disclosed intimidation campaign last year, according to the Washington Post reported. 

After the tech giant moved the executive to a hotel room under a pseudonym, the same agents came and visited her again to tell them they still wanted the app down.  

Read more ....  

WNU Editor: What goes around comes around. Both Apple and Google are no strangers to censoring those that they oppose, and now their Russian operations are being censored albeit with penalties that are more severe.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"What goes around comes around. Both Apple and Google are no strangers to censoring those that they oppose, and now their Russian operations are being censored albeit with penalties that are more severe."

Ha ha that is so true, but I detect a bit of smugness.

The apps are a way for people to organize and to see how many they are. If is an infringement of the freedom of association and speech by Putin.

tu quoque

"Tu quoque is a discussion technique that intends to discredit the opponent's argument by attacking the opponent's own personal behavior and actions as being inconsistent with their argument, therefore accusing hypocrisy."

I hope Putin fails. I also hope the execs fail. I hope similar apps succeed.

The schadenfruede is delicious.

Anonymous said...

For good or ill, I do believe that is what we in the west define as meddling with elections.

Anonymous said...

Hatred for google execs: the one thing every nation can agree on.

Adam said...

Good. Some of the most dangerous people in the world imo.