Vkontakte social network banned Freedom Day application

The Russian social network saw “signs of extremism” in Belarusian national coat of arms.

The popular social network Vkontakte blocked the application, developed by a Belarusian patriot Kanstantsin Novikau specially for the Freedom Day. The purpose of the application was to gather on the Vkontakte no less than 10000 Belarusians to celebrate the Freedom Day on 25 March and also promptly inform potential participants on all the events related to the festive date all over the country, the human rights center Viasna reports.

After the program had been developed it was sent to the social network’s administration for moderation so it could be included into the general application directory. However, the developer received an unexpected response: “You are denied the right to register the application due to violating the article 20.3 of the Code of Administrative Conduct of the Russian Federation (Propaganda and public demonstration of Nazi attributes or symbolics or public demonstration of attributes or symbolics of extremist organizations)”. The moderatos did not care to explain where they saw the application’s extremist, having referred to their internal rules.