Children’s online safety was discussed at the RUSSIA EXPO

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The session "Safe Information Environment is the Most Important Factor of Russia's National Sovereignty" discussed threats to underage online users and measures to counter them that can be taken in our country.

Artur Shlykov, founder and leader of the Russian Public Movement "Civil Committee of Russia", human rights activist, said that today on foreign platforms the environment of aggression, destructiveness and Russophobia thrives, which has an extremely negative impact on children. According to him, the situation with YouTube, which is actively pushing a pro-Western agenda and manipulating the civil position of Russians, including the very young, deserves special attention.

In this regard, the Civil Committee intends to form a petition on the website of the Russian Public Initiative on the need to impose sanctions on the video hosting.

Work on the document will begin as early as March 15. Representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church, the "Parents' Chamber" and other Russian social movements will be involved in the process.

"This is a real people's petition, which will express a real objective opinion from the ground, from people, from the parent community, from athletes, from servicemen of the SMO and their families, from young people - which is very important," emphasized Artur Shlykov.

Yuri Pustovoy, director of the ANO Center for Integrated Family and Childhood Security "Zaslon" ("Barrier"), noted that such a dubious resource as YouTube is completely unnecessary for our youth, and proposed to actively develop its domestic counterpart.

"YouTube is a big cauldron in which everything is boiled. And the ideological orientation is clearly present in it. Some CIPSO [Center for Information and Psychological Operations of Ukraine — note] proposals, statements are constantly popping up there, our videos are blocked and so on. Why do we need it? Let's develop Rutube. We will not ban YouTube: we will make Rutube of high quality, and young people will slowly move there," said Artur Shlykov.

 It is Russian networks that can become a platform for education in the field of digital culture and training the population to recognize and reject false information that is spread on foreign sites. This opinion was expressed by the winner of the "League of Lecturers" project, media analyst Olga Anderson.

"Such a global task is impossible without our domestic social networks. Because as soon as we come out with educational videos on this topic on YouTube, we will be immediately banned, and no one will need us there," Olga Anderson noted.

Lev Pustovoy, Secretary for Youth Affairs of the Russian Public Movement "Civil Committee of Russia", coordinator of the projects "Youth League" and "Generation Z", also stated the need to create a quality domestic alternative to Western platforms. Such a measure, in his opinion, is necessary to combat the substitution of traditional values and the introduction of pro-Western ideas, which are carried out, among other things, by social networks.

In addition, domestic platforms are able to give voice to the authors of content that defends traditional values. As Vakhtang Kipshidze, Deputy Chairman of the Synodal Department for Relations between the Church and Society and Mass Media of the Russian Orthodox Church, explained, it is impossible to do this on Western platforms, as such content is purposefully pessimized.

Society today faces an important task: to destroy the myth that Western platforms are a neutral communication environment, Vakhtang Kipshidze believes.

"Those who do enter this space should realize that this space is inherently hostile," Vakhtang Kipshidze noted.

Nadezhda Zhilina, Secretary for Family and Childhood Affairs of the Russian Public Movement "Civil Committee of Russia" and Co-Chair of the "Parents' Chamber" said that social networks, messengers and other digital means are used against Russia in the information war and cause tangible demographic damage to the country.

We are already seeing success in the work to ensure the safety of children in the Runet. Thus, according to Alexei Shvyrkin, Associate Professor of the Department of "Security, Law and Order" of the Law Institute of TSTU, the laws "On Information, Information Technologies and Information Protection", "On the Protection of Children from Information Harmful to their Health and Development", the formation of a unified registry of domain names and other measures taken in this field have created the necessary mechanisms that serve as an obstacle to the dissemination of undesirable information.

He also noted that a great deal of useful information that can raise awareness of online threats to underage users is available on the websites of the "League of Safe Internet" and the "Center for the Study and Network Monitoring of the Information Environment", created on the initiative of the President of the Russian Federation.