“On Wednesday, January 26, a meeting of the government commission was held, wwhere a list of socially significant websites was approved. So far, this list includes only two resources out of 391 that were on the pilot list: the “Gosuslugi” website and the VK social network”, Olga Barinova, a secretariat representative of the profile Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko, told Vedomosti.
According to Olga Barinova, a website can be considered socially significant if its traffic is at least 5 million users a day, and also if it contains at least 5,000 accounts of government agencies, as well as accounts of state media and major Russian TV channels.
This information was confirmed by the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media press service.
The representative of the Ministry of Digital Development specified that it means full versions of websites being included in the list with the ability to play videos, with the exception of videos from foreign services, such as YouTube.
Further, the commission will approve the inclusion of other websites in the list, said Alexander Khinshtein, a member of the commission, head of the State Duma Committee on Information Technologies, on his Telegram channel.
“We agreed that at the next meeting of the commission we will be discussing the inclusion of Odnoklassniki social network in the list and also determining the list of government bodies websites,” the deputy wrote.
“The monthly audience of VK is more than 70 million Runet users. Therefore, providing free access to the social network as a socially significant digital source is a logical and consistent step for the development of the Internet and for digitalization,” commented the decision of the government commission the representative of the VK owner.
At the beginning of 2020, President of Russian Federation Vladimir Putin came up with the idea of providing citizens with free access to some Internet resources. Last spring, the government determined a pilot list, which included almost 400 websites, including the VK social network, Yandex services, as well as webpages of the largest domestic media and marketplaces.
The composition of the government commission on determination the list of free socially significant websites was approved in December last year. It was headed by Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko and consists of 30 participants. Among its members are the head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Alexander Khinshtein, the Minister of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media Maksut Shadayev, his deputies Bella Cherkesova and Dmitry Kim, the head of Roskomnadzor Andrey Lipov, Deputy Minister of Justice Maxim Beskhmelnitsyn, Deputy Head of the Federal Antimonopoly service Pyotr Ivanov.
https://www.vedomosti.ru/media/articles/2022/01/26/906559-komissiya-pravitelstva-utverdila
