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Protests exploded across Russia over the weekend, fueled largely by videos posted to social media, despite attempts by the Russian government to censor content across various platforms. The protesters braved extreme cold, police brutality and mass arrests, calling for the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was detained last week shortly after returning to the country.
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Social media helped spark and organize the protests, after Navalny called on his supporters to take to the streets on Saturday. Videos and posts promoting action quickly went viral, particularly on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. TikTok videos with the hashtags involving "Free Navalny" and "23 January" garnered more than 200 million combined views by Thursday, according to the news site Open Media.
Young people in particular began filming themselves dressing for upcoming rallies, or as The Moscow Times noted, removing Russian President Vladimir Putin's portrait hanging in classrooms and often replacing it with Navalny's photo.
But the Russian media regulator Roskomnadzor quickly jumped to pressure social media platforms to remove videos that it said called for minors to participate in protests, warning that it was illegal for them to do so. On Friday, the government claimed that 38% of all offending videos on TikTok, 50% on YouTube and 17% on Instagram had been removed. By Saturday Roskomnadzor said more messages had been deleted on TikTok and Russian social media app Vkontakte. Facebook and Google, the owners of Instagram and YouTube respectively, expressed uncertainty about the accuracy of the numbers, Gizmodo reported.
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The attempt at restricting social media communication didn't stop protesters from showing up in the tens of thousands in dozens of cities across Russia, from the island of Sakhalin, just north of Japan, all the way to Moscow, posting on social media along the way and begging for the world to watch.
In Irkutsk, near the Mongolian boarder, thousands chanted "We will not leave!"
