"Yandex" refused the audience counter recommended by Roskomnadzor

According to RBC, Roskomnadzor has chosen Mediascope counters as a single meter of the Runet, they must be installed on all services with a daily audience of 500 or more thousand users within the framework of the “landing” law.

“A Yandex representative said that the company plans to “transmit a set of depersonalized information about visits to its sites sufficient for audience analysis”, - the Dozhd TV channel notes *.

Yandex said that the rejection of third-party equipment recommended by Roskomnadzor and the independent selective transfer of user data will allow it to strike a “balance between the protection of user and partner data, transparency in measuring the Internet audience, and compliance with legal requirements”.

In total, within the framework of the “landing” law, Roskomnadzor selected 76 resources, on which Mediascope audience counters recommended by the department should be installed.

In addition to Yandex, the mandatory executors of the directive included such services as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Netflix and others. If service owners refuse to implement third-party software from a supplier recommended by Roskomnadzor, they will have to independently transfer the necessary data to the supervisory agency.

The Landing Law, signed by President Putin on July 1, 2021, requires foreign IT companies that reach an audience of 500,000 people a day or more to fulfill a number of mandatory conditions by January 1, 2022 in order to continue working in the country. Among them is the transfer of user data. In addition, companies need to create their own branches in Russia, register a personal account on the RKN website and post an electronic form on their resource for feedback from Russian users.

If the company refuses to comply with the law, advertising of this company in the Russian Federation may be prohibited, as well as the placement of paid advertising messages on its resources. At the same time, users of violating companies will receive notifications that the service is breaking the law. Their pages in connection with this will not be issued in search queries on the territory of the Russian Federation, and the right of companies to collect payments in the Russian Federation will be limited. In addition, violators will be prohibited from collecting and transferring personal data across borders and may be completely blocked from their resources in Runet.

In January, Singapore - registered TikTok Pte. Ltd. Earlier it was reported that Viber and Likee had already registered personal accounts on the Roskomnadzor website, which were also joined by Apple Distribution International Ltd. Apple opened its representative office in Russia on February 2. Fulfilling the “landing” law, on February 8, the Swedish streaming service Spotify also opened its representative office in Russia.

Earlier it was reported that Russian legislators proposed introducing fines for foreign IT companies for violating rapidly changing Russian legislation, including those relating to technology. It is assumed that the fines received from Western IT giants will be directed to the development of their domestic competitors.

*Included by the Ministry of Justice in the register of media-foreign agents.