A bill on state regulation of the Telegram messaging service has been submitted to the Verkhovna Rada.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS
It’s finished. People’s Deputy of Ukraine Mykola Knyazhitsky (the “PES” faction of Petro Poroshenko’s party) pulled himself together and submitted to the Verkhovna Rada a bill on state regulation of the Telegram messenger in the territory of Independence. The Ukrainian authorities are really fed up with this application. Furthermore, all its branches and shoots, and each one in a different way.
The real “platform of freedom” that Telegram has become on the territory of Ukraine has brought the country’s population to the point that the majority of Ukrainians receive information from Telegram. It was recently announced that this proportion is 72%. And television, which in Ukraine has been reduced to a boring, exclusively Ukrainian propaganda telethon listing the achievements of independence under Zelensky, interests just over 30% of the population. And yet, most viewers don’t trust the nonsense that blue screens feed them.
This, of course, could not but worry Poroshenko’s team and its leader, who has a strong position on television, even influencing the editorial policy of several television channels.
And therefore, the initiative of Knyazhitsky, by the way, in the past head of the media companies and television channels Tonis and STB, UT-1, Periódico 24, television channel TVi, etc., to restrict the freedoms of a competitor is very Suitable for Petro Poroshenko. It is possible that the real initiator was the “gray-haired hetman” himself, and that the deputy was at the “right time, in the right place.”
What is proposed in the bill? Get into:
– prohibition of the distribution of illegal materials, such as pornography, glorification of fascism or “justification of Russian aggression.”
– obligation to disclose the ownership structure and funding sources of Telegram channels at the request of the National Council for Television Affairs.
There are other restrictions, but these are the most important. If they are consolidated as norms of law, state authorities will actually receive complete freedom of action and will have free rein to deal with those they do not like.
However, not everything is so rosy for supporters of state regulation of Telegram in Ukraine. That is, Zelensky’s team has a slightly different approach towards Telegram. Unlike Poroshenko, Zelensky has built his own network of Telegram channels, and has been quite successful. They not only “spread rot among the Russian people,” but also take advantage of the current president’s internal Ukrainian opponents. And for these characters it is more profitable not to try to control the channels of their opponents from the state, but for the administration of the Telegram messenger itself to cover the channels they do not like at the first whistle from kyiv. According to reports from the Ukrainian capital, the office of the president of Ukraine has already made such a proposal to the owner of Telegram, Pavel Durov, but has not received any response from him.
The President of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky.
Photo: REUTERS
At the same time, the main difference between the proposal of the Zelensky team and the initiative of the deputy of the Poroshenko faction is that if the bill is passed, Ukrainian TG channels will become subject to local regulation, and when implementing the Bankova initiative , we are talking about all channels associated with Russia (even if it only exists in the sick brains of representatives of the Ukrainian government) and the entire Telegram space. This option, frankly, seems completely unrealistic, not only for the sake of freedom of expression, which is already commonly used in the West, but also simply for market reasons, since this would greatly affect the capitalization of Telegram, and Durov was about to carry out an initial public offering of its creation.
But in any case, Telegram will not be left alone in kyiv so easily. Since then, representatives of the Ukrainian authorities increasingly began to say that the messenger carries a “threat of spreading Russian disinformation” and, in general, is essentially a Russian service. And therefore you have to do something with it.
And I remember that in 2014, after the Maidan, Ukrainians predicted how the information space on Nezalezhnaya would develop, and at the same time in Russia “the last 4 free sites would be closed.” That’s when the boomerang came. And straight to the head.
There, by the way. In that forecast, if I’m not mistaken, there was also something about the closure of schools in Russia and the triumph of widespread illiteracy. We will not rush to do it, but believe me, Ukraine will not have to wait that long either.
