Experts on registering bloggers with Russia’s media watchdog: ‘Probably, the market will be cleaned up’
How will the new requirement for bloggers with 10,000 followers to register with the media watchdog affect the media industry?
The State Duma recently passed a law regulating the work of instant messaging services, in particular Telegram. According to it, owners of personal pages with an audience of more than 10,000 followers will be required to provide the Russian media watchdog with information about themselves that allows them to be identified. Read about how marketing and PR experts assess the new rules and what changes in the media market are expected in a report of Realnoe Vremya.
“The check mark will inspire confidence in both readers and advertisers”
According to the legislative initiative, unregistered personal accounts with 10,000 or more subscribers will face serious restrictions. Their owners will not be able to place advertisements or distribute information about possible ways to finance channels. In addition, it will not be possible to repost from unregistered accounts.
Co-founder of DrugMedia influence marketing agency Denis Suprunov hopes that the new rules will help combat bloggers’ fake engagement of subscribers. According to him, the choice of channels and accounts for advertising will become simpler and more transparent.
“For a market manager, in my opinion, this is very cool. When you buy [advertisement] somewhere in a channel or from a blogger on Telegram, as a rule, the number of subscribers are often artificially increased, and there are few views. Now, I think, subscribers will not be increased. We will see natural subscribers with natural views. No one will chase numbers for the sake of advertisers,” Suprunov said in a conversation with Realnoe Vremya.
The State Duma has not yet specified how exactly bloggers will provide information about themselves to the watchdog. It is important that this process is simple and fast and the confirmed channels stand out visually, Suprunov believes:
“If this is some kind of routine, a large pile of papers and waste paper that needs to be confirmed and agreed upon, then, naturally, certain difficulties will arise. But if it is organised online, you submit and receive, for example, some kind of verification mark for this, some kind of verification that you are confirmed, then this verification mark will inspire confidence in both readers and advertisers for normal channels. Probably, the market will be cleaned up,” he explained.
“People will face mistakes and fines before they adapt to the new conditions”
Managing partner of the international PR agency Fields4e Yvgenia Polyakova also stated that the main criterion for evaluating the initiative will be the success of its implementation. She emphasised that in order to evaluate the feasibility of the new rules, it is necessary to understand how they will work in practice.
In her opinion, the law on mandatory registration can create many difficulties for bloggers and advertisers, similar to those that arose when introducing advertising labelling. After all, bloggers and marketers were not warned about the legislative initiative in advance.
“It would be possible to organise some workshops, open master classes on why it will be better to work with the new law, and get feedback from industry representatives. People will face mistakes and fines before they adapt to the new conditions,” the managing partner of the international PR agency Fields4e is sure.
“It is unclear what harm anonymous channel administrators are causing now”
Founder of the communications agency Lampa Yevgeniya Lampadova is wary of the new law:
“The logic of the legislators is not yet very clear, why this law is being adopted, what harm anonymous channel administrators are causing now, why the 10,000-subscriber bar was chosen. There are many questions, but there are no clear answers to them yet.”
For businesses, it does not matter whether the channel administrator is known or not, she explained. The main thing is whether the blogger is working legally.
“The innovations will make life difficult for beginning bloggers”
According to Suprunov, the law is important for controlling the news that bloggers publish on social networks:
“In general, the law makes sense because we know that there are media outlets, for example, that convey certain news to people, and the masses read these media outlets. Telegram channels, large VK.com groups, large accounts on other social networks also, in fact, convey certain news to the masses, but there were no regulations for this. [Bloggers] could publish anything, thereby introducing various fakes into the information space, perhaps, even unconfirmed ones.”
If large channels and groups are monitored, their owners will become more wary of distributing unverified information, the expert hopes. According to Suprunov, there is no point in monitoring bloggers whose audience is less than 10,000 people: there are too many such pages. Not all subscribers read even the accounts with 10,000 followers. The co-founder of DrugMedia influence marketing agency himself would choose the 50,000 mark but noted that this is a subjective assessment.
Polyakova, on the contrary, doubts that the new rules will make the Internet space safer:
“The existing monitoring mechanisms could well ensure control over the appearance of unwanted information on the Internet without additional regulations,” she said.
In her opinion, the established mark of 10,000 subscribers seems arbitrary. Such an audience can mean completely different levels of influence on different platforms:
“On Rutube, for example, this is actually a star, while on YouTube it is just a novice blogger, perhaps a channel “for their own people”. Channels with less than 10,000 subscribers can have significant influence in their niches. Such innovations will make life difficult for novice bloggers, for whom compliance with new regulatory standards may become a critical moment.”