Declaration on the need for geographical localization of internet services and the recognition of the Belarusian segment of the internet as a separate market

What we seek:

the recog­ni­tion of Belarus as a sep­a­rate mar­ket and geo­graph­i­cal local­iza­tion of ser­vices by glob­al inter­net cor­po­ra­tions

Explain­er:

News rec­om­men­da­tion ser­vices have become a vis­i­ble trend among prod­ucts offered by glob­al inter­net cor­po­ra­tions in the past few years. The launch of news aggre­ga­tors based on rec­om­men­da­tion algo­rithms has had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the Belaru­sian media mar­ket.

Now, cor­po­ra­tions do not take into account coun­try speci­fici­ty and tend to ignore the need for serv­ing geo-ref­er­enced con­tent to the coun­try where it comes from.

The absence of ful­ly func­tion­al geo­tar­get­ing for the coun­try cre­ates unequal con­di­tions for jour­nal­ists in Belarus com­pared to their col­leagues in Rus­sia, Ukraine, Lithua­nia, Latvia and Poland. Inter­net cor­po­ra­tions do not treat Belarus as a sep­a­rate coun­try; instead they place Belaru­sian users into the gen­er­al Russ­ian-speak­ing seg­ment or local­ize the con­tent only par­tial­ly. This makes the inter­nal media mar­ket weak­er and hin­ders its full devel­op­ment.

Inter­net cor­po­ra­tions’ unwill­ing­ness to offer ser­vices local­ized for Belarus does not com­ply with the Infor­ma­tion Secu­ri­ty Con­cept adopt­ed in Belarus in March 2019. It has a direct impact on Belarus’ infor­ma­tion sec­tor and vio­lates our country’s infor­ma­tion sov­er­eign­ty.

By no means does the local­iza­tion of ser­vices by the world’s biggest inter­net cor­po­ra­tions vio­late the con­sti­tu­tion­al right of cit­i­zens to seek, receive, trans­fer, pro­duce, keep and impart infor­ma­tion. It only strength­ens the nation­al media mar­ket and keeps Belarus’ infor­ma­tion space open for for­eign media and inter­net resources.

We believe the con­tent cre­at­ed by Belaru­sian media can bet­ter meet expec­ta­tions of Belaru­sian users from rec­om­men­da­tion ser­vices. Thus, the local­iza­tion of such ser­vices will also be ben­e­fi­cial for their own­ers who can offer a bet­ter user expe­ri­ence to their cus­tomers.

We call on our col­leagues, the pub­lic, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of cor­po­ra­tions, as well as the Min­istry of Infor­ma­tion of Belarus, the Min­istry of For­eign Affairs of Belarus and oth­er relat­ed gov­ern­ment insti­tu­tions to address the issue of con­tent local­iza­tion and facil­i­tate pos­i­tive changes in what con­cerns the inter­ac­tion between Belaru­sian media and glob­al rec­om­men­da­tion ser­vices.

We believe Belarus should be a ful­ly inde­pen­dent coun­try on the glob­al inter­net map.

Our actions:

We would like to dis­cuss con­tent local­iza­tion at IGF (Inter­net Gov­er­nance Forum) in Min­sk on Novem­ber 19, 2019. After the dis­cus­sion, we pro­pose to urge Google, Yan­dex, Mail.ru, Opera, Microsoft, Apple and oth­er cor­po­ra­tions to take into account the needs of the Belaru­sian mar­ket and make every effort to address the issue.

Our address will include the fol­low­ing mutu­al­ly non-exclu­sive pro­pos­als:

•          To iden­ti­fy Belarus as a sep­a­rate region in terms of con­sum­ing news and oth­er infor­ma­tion con­tent, as well as to sep­a­rate the Belaru­sian agen­da from news of neigh­bor­ing Russ­ian-speak­ing coun­tries;

•          To pri­or­i­tize Belaru­sian media when rank­ing infor­ma­tion sources in rec­om­men­da­tion sys­tems for users who choose Belarus as their pri­ma­ry region.

Sig­na­to­ries:

Марина Золотова, edi­tor-in-chief of TUT.BY

Николай Козлович, edi­tor-in-chief of ONLINER.BY

Ирина Левшина, edi­tor-in-chief of Bela­PAN

Сергей Сахаров, edi­tor-in-chief of CityDog.by

Егор Мартинович, edi­tor-in-chief of NN.by

Анастасия Рогатко, edi­tor-in-chief of KYKY.org

Павел Свердлов, edi­tor-in-chief of Euroradio.by

Федор Павлюченко, edi­tor-in-chief of reform.by, iSANS media coor­di­na­tor

Юлия Слуцкая, founder of Press Club Belarus

Андрей Бастунец, BAJ head

Франак Вечорко, vice pres­i­dent of Dig­i­tal Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Net­work

Антон Мотолько, blog­ger, activist, iSANS new media coor­di­na­tor

Алла Шарко, deputy direc­tor at Press Club Belarus

DECLARATION On the need for geo­graph­i­cal local­iza­tion of inter­net ser­vices and the recog­ni­tion of the Belaru­sian seg­ment of the inter­net as a sep­a­rate mar­ket (eng) pdf.