Russia's media watchdog Roskomnadzor (or, to give it its snappy English title, 'the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media'), has blocked the nation's citizens from accessing the world's largest pornography provider, Pornhub.com, and its subsidiaries.
Why? Because it wants Russians to "meet someone in real life".
"But didn't they already block Pornhub?" the observant of you may well ask. Glad to see you've been paying attention - Roskomnadzor banned the Russian language version of Pornhub in September last year after a court in the southern western city of Krasnodar Krai declared that the website violated child protection laws.
This new ruling by the media watchdog, set to be debated in court at a later date, now extends that band to Pornhub's global operation. Understandably, Russian users of these adult services are somewhat put out by the latest set of bans, taking to Twitter to lambaste Roskomnadzor's decision. The watchdog's response?
For those who can't speak Russian (most of us then), the Roskomnadzor account responded to complaints on the Pornhub ban by directing users to a response it had given to the 2015 ban, that it felt was still relevant:
Dear Lily [an aggrieved Russian Pornhub user], alternatively you can meet someone in real life.
Yep. The Russian watchdog is spinning this as an attempt to improve the social connections of its citizens in the real world. Not illegal distribution, not child protection, not anything heavy - they want people to meet other people. Apparently.
When users complained that the watchdog needed to come up with a credible "new" response, the watchdog posed the question of whether it was possible to "enter the same river twice?" From here, things just get plain weird.
Russian Pornhub fans contacted the Twitter account of the US site, asking if the adult service was aware it had been banned in Russia. Pornhub issued the following response directly to the account of the watchdog.
Roskomnadzor responded with a typically philosophical response:
But Roskomnadzor wasn't finished there. In order to prove that good could come (steady) from banning pornography, it tweeted the following news from one citizen that had followed through with the watchdog's advice to go out and meet new people.
It reads: "After blocking porn sites I took the famous @roscomnadzor advice. Wedding is soon."
Here's hoping the team from @roscomnadzor are invited along to the reception. @Pornhub will probably be giving the couple a Premium Account by way of a wedding gift.
(Image: iStock)
[Via: Independent, Moscow Times]
