"We ask for urgent software improvements": activists to VKontakte administration

St. Petersburg Community of Urbanists Living City published an open letter to the VKontakte administration. The activists demand urgent improvements to the social network's interface to avoid criminal charges.

"There have been increasing numbers of cases where normal, law-abiding citizens of the Russian Federation are being held administratively liable for posts and messages written many years ago that contain links to prohibited social networks and other Internet resources."- have been named They explained the reason for the appeal, noting that at the time the posts were written, these resources were not banned, and publications with links to them were not considered illegal.

The social network's interface does not allow editing old posts or marking links to websites deemed prohibited by Roskomnadzor.

Activists write that they need an option to automatically search for links to banned social networks, websites, and mentions of organizations and individuals currently designated as "terrorists and extremists." They also want the ability to edit such posts.

Subscribers did not agree with the question:

"It's unacceptable to prosecute people for posts that are 10 years old," "In 1937, the state machine was churning out cases perfectly, even without social media or the internet."

The open letter was written in connection with arrest urban preservationist Oleg Mukhin and politics Ivan Apostolevsky: They were arrested for 10 days for links to Facebook and Instagram in previous VKontakte posts. Previously, a member of the Legislative Assembly Leningrad area Ivan Apostolevskygot seven days of arrest for a post posted on VK eight years ago. Liability There are more and more cases like this.