A Moscow court has ordered a popular entertainment site off the Russian internet for allegedly racist jokes, but the country’s own communications watchdog has so far refused to pull the plug, exposing a rare gap between judicial zeal and regulatory procedure.
At the center of the dispute is YaPlakal, a long‑running humor and meme platform, and a court ruling that calls its content discriminatory without specifying what, exactly, must be removed.
In late April, the Chertanovsky District Court of Moscow ruled that content hosted on YaPlakal, along with two joke websites, anekdotovstreet.com and anekdoto.net, was prohibited for distribution in Russia. Prosecutors had brought the case arguing that the sites carried material that could be “degrading to human dignity” and that promoted discrimination and insults “on the basis of national and racial identity.”
According to independent outlet Meduza, which reported on the decision, the court ordered all three resources added to Russia’s registry of banned sites. The ruling was framed around alleged “racist jokes” on the entertainment platform.
Yet the judgment omitted one critical detail: it did not specify which posts, pages, or categories of content triggered the ban. The ruling “does not specify which content prompted the lawsuit,” Meduza notes, even as it empowers authorities to restrict access to the entire site.
Ordinarily, once a court bans online material, Russia’s federal communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, enforces the decision by adding the site or specific URLs to a nationwide blacklist. In this case, however, the agency has publicly declined to move against YaPlakal.
Roskomnadzor told state news agency TASS that it had received the Chertanovsky court ruling on May 6 but did not add YaPlakal to its registry of prohibited content because the court had not identified “the specific content deemed prohibited.” The regulator said it would instead “send the court a request to clarify which pages on the site contained the offending material.”
This places Roskomnadzor in the unusual position of slowing down, rather than accelerating, the enforcement of an online content ban. At least for now, YaPlakal remains accessible in Russia, even though a court has found its content illegal.
Independent and opposition‑aligned media, which have closely tracked the steady tightening of Russia’s information space, emphasize the broad and untested nature of the court’s claims.
Meduza headlines one of its pieces: “Moscow court bans entertainment website ‘YaPlakal’ over alleged racist jokes,” drawing attention to how a mainstream humor site is being treated as a vehicle for hate speech. In its coverage, Meduza stresses that prosecutors cited materials that “could be classified as degrading to human dignity and as promoting discrimination and the insulting of individuals on the basis of national and racial identity,” but that none of the allegedly offending jokes are identified in the text of the ruling.
In a follow‑up story, Meduza highlights the regulator’s reluctance to act without specifics, summarizing the agency’s stance in the headline: “Russia’s internet regulator declines to block ‘YaPlakal’ site, says court ruling failed to identify prohibited content.”
From this vantage point, the core problem is legal vagueness. A court has effectively authorized a sweeping ban based on an assessment of tone and intent, while declining to say which materials cross the line. For opposition journalists and rights advocates, this looks like a tool for arbitrary censorship that can be selectively enforced.
The case throws into relief the different roles — and sometimes conflicting priorities — of Russia’s courts and its internet regulator.
The court’s approach
The Chertanovsky District Court appears to have prioritized an expansive interpretation of anti‑extremism and anti‑discrimination norms. Acting on a lawsuit from the local prosecutor’s office, it treated the sites’ content as a whole as harmful, authorizing their addition to the banned registry without the granularity of URL‑by‑URL analysis. The logic seems to be that the platforms themselves foster an environment for racist or xenophobic jokes, and thus the platforms as a whole should be blocked.
Roskomnadzor’s approach
By contrast, Roskomnadzor is framing its position as a matter of compliance mechanics. It enforces bans via a technical registry of specific resources, and such a registry needs to know which pages — or at least which domains — to list and why. In this instance, the agency says the court’s order is too vague to execute: it lacks any identification of “the specific content deemed prohibited,” and so the regulator will seek “clarification” before taking action.
In practice, Roskomnadzor has broad powers and is often criticized for over‑compliance with security‑service demands. Here, however, it is invoking procedural exactitude to delay an outright block.
The tension is notable given Roskomnadzor’s previous posture toward YaPlakal. In 2020, the agency added the site to Russia’s registry of “information distribution organizers,” a designation that requires platforms to store users’ correspondence and hand it over to the Federal Security Service (FSB) on request. That move demonstrated that the state already treated YaPlakal as a surveillable part of the online public sphere.
Now, the same regulator is balking at an order to block the site entirely — but not on free‑speech grounds. Instead, the dispute turns on whether a court can demand technical censorship without specifying what, in technical terms, is to be censored.
For critics of Russian internet policy, this exposes both the power and the fragility of the current system:
The YaPlakal case also underscores how far Russian authorities are extending content controls into everyday online culture. YaPlakal, founded in 2004, is not an explicitly political outlet but a broad humor and entertainment platform. Treating it as a threat on par with extremist propaganda blurs the line between protecting vulnerable groups and policing speech more generally.
On one reading, the Chertanovsky court is applying anti‑discrimination norms to online humor that normalizes racist stereotypes. On another, the absence of specific examples in the ruling means the decision functions less as a targeted anti‑hate‑speech measure and more as a signal that any site can be subject to a blanket ban based on loosely described “degrading” content.
Roskomnadzor’s insistence on more detail could set a limited procedural precedent: that courts must at least identify the offending materials before the regulator moves to block. Even if the agency ultimately enforces the ban once the court clarifies its order, the episode illustrates how formal requirements can slow or complicate censorship.
Despite their different positions in this case, the court, prosecutors, and Roskomnadzor are aligned on a basic premise: that the state may and should intervene to restrict online content deemed racist or discriminatory.
Where they diverge is in method and emphasis:
In the short term, YaPlakal’s fate hinges on whether the court issues the clarifications Roskomnadzor has requested. In the longer term, the case will be watched as a test of how tightly — and how precisely — Russia’s legal and regulatory machinery can be coordinated to police the country’s online humor and discourse.