MOSCOW. April 26 (Interfax) - The Russian telecommunications watchdog Roskomnadzor has blocked over 160,000 online resources in Russia containing knowingly false information on the progress of the special military operation in Ukraine since February 24 last year, Roskomnadzor said on Wednesday.
In particular, over 4,300 pirate video streaming services "distributing advertisements with files about the special military operation" have been blocked since February 2022, it said.
Almost 3,500 mirror sites of previously banned information resources, including those designated as foreign agents in Russia, have also been blocked. "A major anti-Russian resource creates a new mirror site of a blocked site once a day on average. For this purpose, they use hosting sites belonging to American IT companies," Roskomnadzor said.
The telecoms watchdog noted that it takes less than three hours from the moment a mirror site is identified until it is blocked.
"A fake is knowingly false information. Such materials are created and distributed in order to cause a strong psycho-emotional reaction in people. Fakes are often based on a grain of truth. In numerical terms it corresponds to the Pareto golden rule: 20% of truth, 80% of lies," the statement said.
"Fakes act with a cumulative effect: a parallel information reality is being gradually created around a person," Roskomnadzor said. "This results in abandoning critical thinking, the perception of other points of view and compliance with information hygiene. The adversary seeks to saturate the Runet [Russian segment of the Internet] information field with fakes, but the existing legislative and organizational and technical mechanisms allow us to counter this," Roskomnadzor said.