An investigation has exposed the tech firm’s cooperation with autocratic regimes to remove unfavourable content. Google has cooperated with autocratic regimes around the world, including the Kremlin in Russia and the Chinese Communist party, to facilitate censorship requests, an Observer investigation can reveal. The technology company has engaged with the administrations of about 150 countries since 2011 that want information scrubbed from their public domains. As well as democratic governments, it has interacted with dictatorships, sanctioned regimes and governments accused of human rights abuses, including the police in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. After requests from the governments of Russia and China, Google has removed content such as YouTube videos of anti-state protesters or content that criticises and alleges corruption among their politicians. Google’s own data reveals that, globally, there are 5.6m items of content it has “named for removal” after government requests. Worldwide requests to Google for content removals have more than doubled since 2020 (…) In the four years to June 2024, Russia accounted for more than 60% of takedown requests. The country’s internet censor, Roskomnadzor, is one of the government agencies that corresponds most frequently with Google – and has earned the nickname “Rosco” in some of its reports. At the behest of Roskomnadzor, the tech company removed a YouTube video that allegedly exposed “corruption among politicians” and made “some rhetorical threats of violent action against the alleged corrupt politicians”, Google’s report said. Russian citizens were also prevented from viewing certain posts on the company’s Blogger platform, which “included criticism of Russian military history and policy, and Russian patriotic holidays. It also incited violence against residents of a Russian town,” the report said. (…) In China, at the request of the ministry of public security, which oversees the police and domestic political spying networks, Google took down more than 200 videos. The ministry had requested removals for 412, of which 346 “contained allegations about corruption within the political system in the People’s Republic of China or stories about top government officials”. Google also assisted in China’s crackdown on free speech, removing profiles that impersonated the country’s president, Xi Jinping. Online impersonation accounts were banned in 2015 after Chinese citizens used them to covertly criticise Xi and to circumvent censorship laws, which are some of the world’s most prohibitive.
via guardian: Revealed: Google facilitated Russia and China’s censorship requests