Among the few things Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky agree on is that Russians should no longer be able to log into Facebook. The Putin regime has, in fact, blocked access to the social network as part of its policy of repression against the open Internet. And, for its part, the Zelensky government is asking all Western technology companies to disconnect Russia from the rest of the world in order to further accentuate its pariah status.
Tech companies have, for the most part, taken part in the impressive boycott of Russia by major international brands. Ikea, Adidas, McDonald's, Starbucks, Toyota, Apple, Electronic Arts, Netflix, Disney, Coca-Cola and just about every other major brand that had gradually become part of Russian middle-class life after the fall of the Soviet Union have decided to suspend their activities in the country.
This brutal withdrawal from the Russian market is all the more remarkable in that it is voluntary. The brands weren't shut out by the Kremlin, and in most cases they weren't even forced out of the Russian market under Western sanctions. McDonald's will give up a tenth of its global revenue because the brand believes that continuing to sell Big Macs to ordinary people at its 850 outlets in Russia would make it complicit in Putin's war.
However, the question arises: can the situation be comparable for technology companies? Or, to be more precise: should we think differently about the technological platforms that connect people to information and their ilk?
Certainly, every major tech company that pulls out of Russia deals another blow to Putin's regime (who has called economic sanctions and the withdrawal of international brands "economic warfare"), but it's also a step closer to closing all the independent spaces that remained to the Russians, especially for those who oppose the government and who would like to organize, communicate and share news and information without being entirely at the mercy of the Kremlin.
In an online meeting organized by Future Tense about how the Ukrainian conflict is affecting (and destroying) the internet and independent media in Russia, Taïsia Bekboulatova, editor-in-chief of Holod Media (an courageously independent who was driven into exile), opposed calls by Zelensky and all those who call for tech platforms to withdraw from Russia.
According to her, this would be doing the Kremlin a favor, because local alternatives to international applications like WhatsApp and Twitter – for example the social network VKontakte – are dangerous for users, because they are completely controlled by the Russian authorities.
Mykhailo Fedorov, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Digital Transformation of Ukraine, is a strong supporter of the isolation of Russia by all Western companies. When Apple announced on March 1 that it was ceasing to sell its products in Russia and that it would limit some of its services there (for example, by blocking access to Russian state media and disabling the service real-time traffic tracking on Apple Maps in Ukraine), Fedorov tweeted to Apple CEO Tim Cook: “So finish the job blocking access to the App Store in Russia. They are killing our children, let us kill their access!”
No more @Apple product sales in Russia!
Now @tim_cook let's finish the job and block @AppStore access in Russia. They kill our children, now kill their access!
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The only precedent that I can remember of such a rush to prevent a country from having access to foreign brands (and even from participating in an international sports competition) as a form of moral condemnation is what was done for long years to ostracize the racist apartheid regime in South Africa. But that was before the internet, and I wonder what we would have thought of depriving Nelson Mandela's supporters of information and news from the outside world, as well as a safe way to communicate with each other.
There is no answer that is easy or completely satisfying once you accept that nothing is ever black or white. I understand that, for the representatives of the Ukrainian government under siege, any misfortune that strikes Russia, even for a short time, can seduce, but that does not necessarily mean that it is the good choice for Western decision makers and businesses.
Stalin was behind the first Iron Curtain, during the Cold War era, and it would be a shame if Western tech companies pulling out of the country erected a digital wall for the 20th century, a project that would come closer of the Great Firewall of China.
After exaggerating about a decade ago the transformational benefits of connecting people around the world on borderless technology platforms like Facebook or Twitter, it has become fashionable to dismiss the undeniable benefits of technological globalization and to lose sight of Taisia Bekbulatova's request.
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We give ourselves a good conscience, warm at home, criticizing companies like Meta, Alphabet and Twitter for all their flaws, but for Russians who are ashamed of their leader's war in Ukraine, these Western platforms are a buoy safety. We used to smuggle fax machines to dissidents who lived behind the Iron Curtain. Why would you want to cut them off from all means of communication today?
Putin could of course do this on his own. It is tragic to see how quickly the war in Ukraine (or the "special military operation" according to the Orwellian expression introduced by the Kremlin and now compulsory in Russia) further restricts the remaining spaces of freedom of the Internet and the Russian media landscape.
Contrary to what many of us may assume, Russia on the eve of the Ukrainian conflict was not the Soviet Union, or even the Chinese totalitarian state. Citizens could consult foreign media online, find independent information from national media, such as the Novaya Gazeta newspaper or the Echo of Moscow TV channel, and complain about their government on sites like Facebook.
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As Taisia Bekbulatova reminded us, Russia was never a liberal democracy or a safe place to practice journalism. Even before Putin invaded Ukraine, Western tech companies had already had to make many questionable compromises to stay in the country, such as when Google and Apple were forced to pull an app created by Putin from their app stores. opposition last year.
However, Russia looked more like a hybrid authoritarian regime than a Soviet-style totalitarian state. The danger today is that Putin wants to speed up the return to that era and that, by making a break that might seem perfectly moral to us, we might end up helping him.
