Russian Voting App Banned

An example of this occurred last week, when Apple and Google banned a Russian voting app due to local laws. The app offered tactical voting advice, directing most of its users to vote for the communist party in the Russian parliamentary elections last weekend. This voting app also existed for months as a Telegram bot, and despite thousands of reports and requests to take it down, we let it remain available. After the election started, however, both Google and Apple removed the app from their app stores, explaining that it violated local laws against interfering with elections – and that it was the developers’ responsibility to ensure compliance. Within 24 hours, Telegram was forced to follow the stores’ policies and temporarily suspend the bot for the 2 remaining days of the election.

A screenshot of a text passage describing Apple and Google removing a Russian tactical-voting app from their app stores during parliamentary elections. The app directed users toward the communist party, and Telegram later suspended its bot to comply with the stores’ policies. The joke is a sarcastic political commentary about platform rules, election interference, and the contradiction of allowing the bot to remain available until voting began.

• @jeppa420 / 20947 2021-09-26