Google pays fines for failing to take down content in Russia

Google has paid Russia more than 32 million roubles for failing to remove illegal content on YouTube. The communications regulator Roskomnadzor announced that, so far, the administrative measures are sufficient and slowing down the speed of YouTube will not be necessary. A YouTube representative said that Google complied with requests to remove content in 96.2% of the time it was requested in 2020, but Russian authorities considered that too much banned content remained available online. Among the banned content, there are child pornography, posts promoting drug abuses, information about homemade weapons and explosives. Technical difficulties are allegedly the reasons for Google’s failure to take down all the illegal content.