The Scientific and Practical Seminar «Digital Platforms – New Environment of Interaction»
Research Fellow of the International Laboratory of Digital Transformation in Public Administration of the HSE University, Dr. E. Diskin attended the scientific and practical seminar «Digital Platforms - New Environment of Interaction» at the Institute of Legislation and Comparative Law of the Government of the Russian Federation.
Participants of the seminar discussed a wide range of issues related to digital platforms, including:
- What is a digital platform from a legal perspective;
- Impact of digital platforms on the economy, public administration, human rights, change in their. scope and content;
- Digital platforms and antitrust regulation;
- Anti-corruption and digital platforms;
- Network effect in the operation of digital platforms;
- Protection of labour rights and digital platforms;
- Risks posed by digital platforms;
- The risk of discrimination associated with digital platforms.
Evgeny Diskin made a report «Censorship of digital platforms as a form of discrimination», in which he developed and supplemented the ideas expressed in the report «Digital transformation and protection of citizens' rights in digital space» published in 2021 by the Presidential Council for Civil Society and Human Rights of the Russian Federation. In particular, he noted that the principle of non-discrimination was a key element of the international human rights protection system.
Currently, there is a lot of evidence that Russians are persecuted within the framework of their use of digital platforms. Censorship is a form of such prosecution, which concerns almost all possible actions within foreign digital (internet) platforms. Evgeny Diskin noted that, unfortunately, current events clearly predetermine the shifting focus of the legislator on the regulation of those restrictions of the freedom to seek, distribute and process information, which are dictated by the need to protect the sovereignty of the Russian Federation from unlawful encroachment. Nevertheless, it is sometimes sad to conclude that the issue of protection of the right to speech, the protection of the right to freely receive and impart information in any lawful way has been completely left out of the legal discourse. The dominant theme in research on the protection of human rights in the digital information environment is the issue of personal data protection, but it should be recalled that it is not the only pressing and burning issue. There is a need to expand the range of human rights research.
Within the framework of these studies, a student project aimed at researching and describing digital discrimination of Russian citizens was organized within the walls of the National Research Institute of Higher School of Higher Education. It is in plans to publish a white book, which would describe in the most comprehensive manner specific examples of discrimination and their consequences for Russian citizens.