In a lawsuit, the public prosecution office of Almaty, Kazakhstan has demanded from Google, Facebook, Twitter, and blogging platform LiveJournal, which is particularly popular among Russian-speaking bloggers, to stop publishing content from opposition media, The Next Web reported citing Novosti-Kazakhstan.
In other words, prosecutors want Google and others to shut down pages, groups, and/or blogs that have been recognized by their office as “directed at inflaming social hatred.”
Together with major Internet companies, defendants in this case are several Kazakh opposition media outlets and their websites.
“Google is a defendant. I don’t know if they know about it, but they are on trial, and they have to present their response to this lawsuit,” the lawyer of opposition newspaper “Respublika” said during a press conference.
The lawsuit filed by Kazakh prosecutors is related to the recently completed trial of one of the country’s opposition leaders, Vladimir Kozlov, during which several media outlets, including “Respublika,” have been declared as extremist.
