After giving the world's gay community quite possibly its most iconic studly-man image in decades, the Russian government has since gone on a legislative and regulatory tear against all things gay. This week, the controversial "gay propaganda" bill that President Vladimir Putin signed into law in 2013 was linked to an apparent effort by a Russian agency to discover pro-gay communications on social networks, especially those that include emoji and emoticons with same-sex kisses and family images with two dads or two moms.
The Russian-newspaper story was reported in the United States by Vocativ on Wednesday. It explained that the country's Roskomnadzor media-watchdog agency reached out to a pro-government youth activism group, known as Young Guard of United Russia, and asked its members to essentially snitch on anybody whose social media posts broke the country's Article 6.13.1 law, which forbids, among other things, "propaganda of homosexuality among minors."
According to the original Russian report, the uncovered letter sent to this activism group by Roskomnadzor Deputy Head Konstantin Vladimirovich Marchenko contained specific guidances about emoji on Facebook, along with his concerns that "most" social media users are minors—even though a cursory glance at not-so-concrete surveys reveals that most Russian social media users are not minors and are therefore not under the purview of the law in question. We, like Vocativ, also wonder whether Marchenko's request made any mention of the eggplant emoji in this regard.
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