Russian Govt. Backs Video Channels For Millennial

Video channels are popular among youths of this generation. Three such channels have garnered a lot of views in the popular social media site, Facebook that has had a lot of millennial of the US hooked on to them. However, an important piece of information that has been kept undisclosed is the fact that the Russian Government plays a significant role in keeping these videos up and running.

Maffick Media is responsible for running these pages. This company has a majority of its stakeholders by Ruptly, which is under the control of the Russian Government. Although the company, Maffick Media has a number of freelancer and contractors hired under them in recent months, it is still not a company registered in the US and is still under the jurisdiction of Germany.

Facebook has taken a significant step here by suspending these pages and has said that they intend to reach out to people who were concerned with running these pages and how they are associated with their parents’ company. This may come as a surprise to some as Facebook has never been embroiled in such a situation and has never resorted to asking users who their parent company was. However, this comes in the wake of the decision taken by the Facebook in making these pages more transparent and is ready to take aggressive steps against pages that were backed by the governments. A reputed spokesperson of Facebook believes that this suspension is a necessary measure as they believe that whoever is browsing through pages in Facebook should be aware of who is handling them. This is on par with the steps that Facebook has taken to combat unethical behavior.

The three web pages run by Maffick includes Soapbox which is mainly concerned with current affairs, Waste-Ed, an environment concerned channel and Backthen, a channel responsible for showcasing the imperialism of the West. Though this company is alleged to be supported by RT, which is further considered as an outlet for Kremlin’s propaganda, a spokesperson from Maffick recently said that they were an independent institution. The three web pages have more than 30 million hits, thus, enforcing the requirement of Facebook to take strict actions against them, especially if it has Russian connections.