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recorded in Moscow (RUB200,000), followed by St Petersburg (RUB165,000), while the average regional IT salary was RUB135,000. The top three companies with the highest average salaries are Avito classifieds portal, Raiffeisenbank and T1 Holding (former TCS Group and Tinkoff bank).
YouTube is being throttled in Russia as of July 16 — a platform wheremns of Russians watch reports and interviews from independent journalists undermining the Kremlin’s case for its war in Ukraine. Whatsapp, too, has been targeted as officials say the messenger is used by terrorist groups. The goal is to make the services cumbersome and annoying, to frustrate Russians to switch into home-grown alternatives that Moscow has under tighter control. Talk of blocking YouTube in Russia first started shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. The Russian authorities adopted a number of laws which, in effect, imposed military censorship — for instance, the war can not be called a “war”, and any statements that contradict the defence ministry’s official statements on the conflict could lead to imprisonment. Russia also blocked Facebook and Twitter, and it seemed that banning YouTube was only a matter of time — especially considering the huge amount of uncensored content freely released by independent media, journalists and bloggers on the site.
Roskomnadzor has decided to take control of social network users whose audience exceeds 1 thousand people per day; they will be required to report their personal data to the agency. Those who refuse will be prohibited from selling advertising. For the main Russian anonymous social network, Telegram, this is not yet a very terrible threat: 90% of advertising posts in Telegram channels are not marked in any way. After the adoption of the “law on bloggers” in 2014, which equated bloggers with the media, Roskomnadzor began maintaining its own register of Russians with an audience of more than 3 thousand people. Such users were required to register in the registry, provide the RKN with their contact information, and check the information it published for possible violations of laws (for example, on extremism or election campaigning). In reality, no one followed all these rules. In 2017, the RKN stopped keeping records of bloggers, and instead began to actively expand the register of information dissemination organizers (ORI), which appeared in the Law “On Information” as part of the so-called “Yarovaya package.”
Since March 2022, Instagram has been banned in Russia: the parent company of the social network, Meta, has been recognized as an extremist organization, and the platform itself, along with Facebook, have been blocked throughout the country. But this was not enough for the Kremlin. At the end of June, State Duma deputies introduced a new initiative - to ban any advertising on the resources of “undesirable” and extremist organizations. And also - on all sites to which access is limited.
We are talking about a package of amendments to the laws “On Advertising” and “On Combating Extremist Activities.” The co-authors include several “heavyweights”, including Senator Andrei Klishas and deputies Alexander
216 RUSSIA Country Report August 2024 www.intellinews.com