YouTube has grown to be the most popular website on the Russian Internet, but the Kremlin wants to take steps to limit its influence. Government critics are using the platform to voice their political opinions and can reach audiences on a scale similar to government-controlled TV stations. Yet the question remains: Will the authorities actually be able to hold back this online wave of opinion? The final episode of Andrey Loshаk’s InterNYET series looks at the YouTube phenomenon in Russia.
Their impact stretches beyond the 2016 U.S. presidential election that made them an international household name. Russian trolls, says blogger Ilya Varlamov, have changed “the whole picture” for online news in Russia. But how did they do it? In this video, taken from Current Time’s InterNYET: A History Of The Russian Internet series, former employees at a St. Petersburg troll factory get down to specifics.
Current Time TV's Form #087 mini-series on the lives of transgender Russians has been nominated for Best Representation on Screen at the 2019 Content Innovation Awards on October 13. In this interview, series creator Yekaterina Ponomaryova, a Russian documentary filmmaker, explains how she came up with the idea for the series and why, despite pervasive negative stereotypes, tolerance toward transgenders runs strongest in Russia's provinces.
Ukraine’s first modeling agency for the disabled hopes to make wheelchairs as acceptable as stilettos on local catwalks. In a country that, until recently, officially termed the disabled "invalids," that could prove a challenge. But 27 aspiring models in the city of Kharkiv are ready to take that challenge on.
Albert Razin, a scholar and activist in the Russian region of Udmurtia, set himself on fire in front of the local parliament building in September and died shortly afterwards. His death was a final act of protest in defense of the Udmurt language, which he believed was threatened by recent legislation from Moscow.
LiveJournal was founded in Seattle, but became the go-to platform for Russian activists. Then the Kremlin hit back, heralding a wider crackdown on Internet freedom. This story is part of Current Time's documentary series InterNYET: A History Of The Russian Internet.
2019 marked the 50th anniversary of the day U.S. astronauts Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins became the first people to land on the moon. Anna Shamanska explains why the real story of July 20, 1969 is much more interesting than any conspiracy theory.
Russia bucked global trends with two homegrown social media that are more popular there than Facebook. Both were backed by the same Israeli-Russian billionaire tech investor. This story is part of Current Time TV's documentary series InterNYET, exploring the history of the Russian web.
Three children look happy and healthy now with their grandparents in Georgia, but that's after living for a year with their mother in an Iraqi jail. Their father, an Islamic State militant, was killed in Iraq, and the Georgian government is still trying to bring her home.
Born in a former Soviet research institute, Rambler was Russia's most popular website in the 1990s and was sold for more than $230 million in 2004. But the site was eclipsed by a dynamic new search engine, and its creator counted his profits in the tens of thousands of dollars.
Leonid was born in a small town in Russia's Far East, where his mother beat him for being gay. When he finished school, he left home and met Aleksandr, with whom he now campaigns for LGBT rights.
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