Google, Russian Sovereignty, and Algorithmic Authority

Click here for more on the Google Doodle that redefined Russian and Global conceptions of gay rights surrounding the Sochi Olympics.

“A border in Russia is more than a border.”

--Yevgeny Yevtushenko, cited by Dmitri Trenin^[i]

“Ultimately, [internet freedom] isn't just about information freedom; it's about what kind of world we're going to inhabit. It's about whether we live on a planet with one internet, one global community, and a common body of knowledge that unites and benefits us all. Or a fragmented planet in which access to information and opportunity is dependent on where you live and the whims of censors.”

-- Hillary Clinton, Internet Freedom Speech^[ii]

Google in Russia: The Search for Sovereign Power in the Age of Algorithmic Authority

Throughout its history, Russia has largely defined itself through the marking out of its borders. However, with the development of the internet and Web 2.0, the world has migrated to cyberspace and undermined the legitimacy of governmental, geographically-based boundaries. No where is this shift more clear than in the emergence and world power of Google, whose search engine and services increasingly define perspective and set conceptual boundaries superseding traditional ones. While for a time Google has seemed to have overlaid geographic borders with a more uniform online world, in recent years Russia has moved to map traditional ideas of power onto the free-flowing nature of cyberspace through legislation and statements critical of Google and the internet. While the outcome of this agenda has yet to be determined, to see Russia through the global lens that Google provides is to realize that, at its existential core, Russia can be defined not by any static characteristic but by its timeless will to determine its limits and its reach, and in so doing to construct its distinct identity and individuality.

As society increasingly shifts from the physical to the virtual realm, Google has gained greater capacity to present and as such to define a new, globally accessible version of reality that melts government-enforced borders. Google abides by the compelling mission “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” a mission which, according to their website, “crosses all borders.”^[iii] Google does this primarily by way of its search engine, though in recent years it has expanded to provide other services on the same principle, including books, maps and news. The search engine works by way of a simple, three-part process: it crawls the web for information, indexes that information, and serves it to its customers.^[iv] In this way, it becomes the chief gateway to the virtual world and the authority on the perspective with which it is received. Prominent internet theorist Clay Shirky explains this as algorithmic authority, or the power to define what is true and what is legitimate through the search results provided by an algorithm, rather than through “human” or “institutional” legitimation.^[v]

However, Google’s products, while based on a science, are not necessarily built on an objective process free of biases. The search engine has the power to “give prominence to popular, wealthy, and powerful sites at the expense of others”^[vi] and Google is no exception. It is for this reason that Siva Vaidyanathan, a key expert on Google, characterizes Google’s role as follows: “Overwhelmingly, we now allow Google to determine what is important, relevant, and true on the Web and in the world...we have surrendered control over the values, methods, and processes that make sense of our information ecosystem.”^[vii] Thus, Google becomes a “chief lens through which we see the world,” according to Vaidyanathan.^[viii] Just as Google delivers information to people, it is also important to note that it collects, stores and analyzes information and data that they input; its process is, in a way, a recycling of information. Google has become the gateway shaping and determining the borders of the world we can access and perceive -- including its ability to control the meaning of Russia and Russianness -- and its executives are the gatekeepers, providing and collecting information that passes through in both directions.

This YouTube video, taken by car passengers from the Kola Peninsula, features the glistening streak of the Chelyabinsk Meteor that hit central Russia on February 15 of 2013.^{[ix] [x]} I included this video as an interactive way to understand the power of Google, the parent company for YouTube, to erase geographical boundaries and provide ubiquitous experiences of what prior to the digital age might have been the epitome of a geographically limited event: a meteor and the place it falls on Earth. Especially meaningful in this case is not only that the video features the meteor, but that it does so from the view of the driver of a car, from behind the windshield. This human aspect of the video allows viewers the world over to have not only the same visual experience as those in Russia, but also to be transported into a real-time, real-life experience of it. As I note in the paper, that Russians and foreigners alike can experience the meteor in this way does not only erase borders but provides a global experience that undermines national sovereignty and distinctiveness in favor of a markedly borderless world.

Click here for more on the decision which faced Google regarding how to portray Crimea on their Google Maps service.

However, it is no longer Putin who has the final say in determining “hearts and minds,” but rather it is Google, which wields great influence in Russia. Because Google is responsible, according to a source from 2013, for 51 percent of all searches in Russia -- another 46 fall to Yandex, often called the Google of Russia which shares a similar mission and American funding -- its high profile platform is largely responsible for shaping public opinion and collective identity.^[xii] In general, the understanding of the Ukraine crisis, of which Crimea’s annexation is a central part, comes through a search engine filtered not by Russian censorship and surveillance apparatuses of past eras, but through Google. More immediately, it is Google Maps’ portrayal of Crimea that serves as a final say in the eyes of the people beyond any treaty signed in the physical world. In fact, Google was faced with a decision on how to draw the borders of Crimea after the signing of this treaty, and chose to portray Crimea as part of Russia, but only to a Russian audience.^[xiii] Google’s action in this case represents its ability to use its algorithmic authority to define Russian borders, through its map service, and to define Russia, Crimea, and Ukraine, through its search engine, both inside and out of Russia. In this way, Google has mastery over the reality of borders and of belonging within them, overpowering traditional authority’s influence. Now, rather than the state controlling borders and the identity of Russianness upon which borders are marked, it is Google which has power to define for Russians what Russia is and provide the same idea -- or a different on -- to others around the world, thus erasing previous boundaries and distinctness.

Google’s ability to determine perspective and as such reality for the globe is indicative of a larger trend towards a globalized, interconnected society which has been challenging Russian sovereignty and individuality. The concept of globalization as it relates to cyberspace is well captured by sociologist Manuel Castells’s philosophy of cyberspace. He argues of space that in the information age, rather than being grounded in geography and physical location, its “interactivity”^[xiv] and the dissolution of traditional conceptions of time and distance transform space into something consisting of ‘flows” of information in which geography is less relevant. The Russianness and Russian nation produced by Google’s lens itself is symbolic of a restructuring of space and a reworking of time that is brought about by the connectivity the internet provides. This new conception of space, upon which Google capitalizes, is the basis for its reordering of the world. In this global transformation, Russia is swept away into an increasingly homogenous international identity, the substance of which is the newly ubiquitous process of accessing information and the new reality of space associated with it.

As a new source of global authority, Google’s redefinition of the world’s borders and substance poses an existential threat to Russian power and identity. This is because Russian power throughout history has relied on its ability to determine boundaries and borders and to shape the public opinion and collective Russian identity (and identities) upon which those borders are laid. Over a decade ago, before Google entered the world stage, Dmitri Trenin wrote about the importance of borders in the Russian past, present and future; he believes the fluctuating size and ability of Russia to define its borders overtime is central to the “Russian Idea.”^[xv] He explains that whereas in the Imperial Era, Russia opted for an expansionist outlook, in a Post-Soviet environment Russia must decide anew how to set its spatial agenda, in connection with the need to reunite its population and manage external challenges from the Far East, Central Asia, and Europe. In fact, it is this post-Soviet redefinition of borders which Trenin believes will “shape [Russia’s] international identity.”^[xvi] He also noted that while the laying of borders is a political act, it is based on a psychological mindset of the population to accept those borders internally.^[xvii] While mechanisms of propaganda, censorship, and surveillance in Imperial^[xviii] and Soviet^[xix] contexts could work to define that mindset, or, referring back to Putin’s speech on the annexation of Crimea, the “hearts and minds” of the populace, that ability has been lost to Google, who can provide the perspective it wills of the world, and of Russia’s place in it, through its products and search engine.

Click here for more on the recent legislation targeting Russian bloggers, and to find out how it threatens internet freedom more generally.

However, Google’s power is not necessarily absolute or permanent; recently, the Russian government has taken measures to reclaim its sovereignty and control of conceptions of Russianness away from Google’s clutches.  In recent years, an “Internet Blacklist”^[xx] bill and a “Blogger Law” have been implemented, both of which crack down on internet users and their rights to freedom of expression. More specific to Google, Vladimir Putin recently called the internet a “project of the CIA” and warned Russians to refrain from using Google and Yandex.^[xxi] Currently, a new law which is awaiting Putin’s signature threatens to ban Google products like Gmail from extracting Russian data from the country.^[xxii] While these actions might be interpreted as taking a defensive approach, Russia’s longer term plan in this regard hints at a more proactive reclaiming of its online borders. The government is currently planning to implement a state-owned search engine, tentatively to be named Sputnik, which might provide a more positive image of Russia through its search results,^[xxiii] and the idea for a “Digital Sovereignty” law has been suggested by lawmaker Alexei Lisovenko.^[xxiv] While Google’s new influence over space and time might seem unquestionable, Russia has what Russian internet expert Andrei Soldatov believes is a longer-term plan to “‘ground’” such platforms as Google on Russian territory.^[xv] The legislation and statements by Russian officials describe here suggest that the Russian agenda might in the near and longterm future seriously undermine Google’s yet to be challenged global power.

Thus, viewing Russia through the lens of Google reveals its timeless, core trait of desiring to exert its will to define its own spatial boundaries, both in concrete and abstract ways. Russia’s reaction to Google’s reorientation of geographical limits and boundaries reveals this yearning, both as an extension of its parallel historical agenda and as a timely response to a changing technological landscape. This is not a Russian characteristic limited to the Russian elite and powerful, but a participatory characteristic which requires the subscription of all Russian “hearts and minds,” as Putin has put it. While Google threatens to erase preconceived borders and take away Russia’s power to define them, the Russian resistance to Google’s force makes clear that this transformation is not set in stone, and that overtime Russia may find ways to reclaim independence by marking out its territory in cyberspace -- based upon its timeless quality of desiring to demarcate its own spatial and conceptual boundaries.