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All references to children’s fashion removed by VKontakte Russian social net

Many Internet surfers indicated that pictures of the kind might be of interest mostly for pedophiles

MOSCOW, May 28 (Itar-Tass) - At the request of Russia’s federal watchdog agency in the field of mass communications, Roskomnadzor, the highly popular social network VKontakte has removed all the scandalous references to children’s fashion from its website, Vladimir Pikov, the press secretary of the agency told the Izvestia daily.

“We sent a letter to the VKontakte senior management where we asked them to restrict access to the unlawful content, against which Internet users had filed petitions, and we listed references to more than twenty groups dealing with children’s fashion,” Pikov said.

VKontakte executives confirmed to Izvestia that all the groups of this kind had been removed. The network will continue suppressing such content in the future, too, they said.

November 1, 2012, the Russian authorities launched a unified register of websites containing unlawful information - the so-called Blacklist.

Soon after that, groups devoted to the so-called children’s fashion started emerging in VKontakte that produced a heated public reaction. The photos uploaded in the network showed children in salacious clothes and poses.

Many Internet surfers indicated that pictures of the kind might be of interest mostly for pedophiles.