Zen News (russian: Дзен Новости tr. Zen Novosti; formerly ''Yandex.News'') is a

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

n news aggregator developed by

Yandex Yandex LLC (russian: link=no, Яндекс, p=ˈjandəks) is a Russian multinational technology company providing Internet-related products and services, including an Internet search engine, information services, e-commerce, transportation, maps ...

in 2000 and owned by VK since 2022. Since 2016, it has been censored by the Russian authorities via the

whitelist A whitelist, allowlist, or passlist is a mechanism which explicitly allows some identified entities to access a particular privilege, service, mobility, or recognition i.e. it is a list of things allowed when everything is denied by default. It is ...

of media which were allowed on the Yandex main page. During the

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

, the aggregator with a 34+ million audience (2019) aided the state propaganda by concealing all independent coverage of the

war War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

events. Such practices had a significant negative impact on the reputation of Yandex and are one of the core reasons behind the sanctions against the company's CEO

Tigran Khudaverdyan Tigran Oganesovich Khudaverdyan (russian: Тигран Оганесович Худавердян, hy, Տիգրան Հովհաննեսի Խուդավերդյան, Tigran Hovhannesi Khudaverdyan; born 28 December 1981) is a Russian businessman, f ...

, and president

Arkady Volozh Arkady Yuryevich Volozh (russian: Аркадий Юрьевич Волож; born 11 February 1964) is a Russian technology entrepreneur, and founder of Yandex. Yandex is one of Europe's largest Internet companies, operating Russia's most popul ...

Operations

Zen.News aggregates articles submitted by publishers via

RSS RSS ( RDF Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication) is a web feed that allows users and applications to access updates to websites in a standardized, computer-readable format. Subscribing to RSS feeds can allow a user to keep track of many di ...

2.0 and ranks them according to a number of parameters. The articles are sorted and added to collections related to key events (so-called Stories). The process is automated. Since 2016, the service only aggregates publications from publishers with a license issued by

Roskomnadzor The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, abbreviated as ''Roskomnadzor'' (RKN) (russian: Роскомнадзор �КН, is the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, co ...

. By July 2019, the monthly audience of Zen.News (Yandex.News) totaled 34 mil users—which does not include the visitors to the Yandex main page which featured top Stories. For the top Russian media, the share of visitors from Zen.News (Yandex.News) reached up to 36%. In 2014, it became known that the

government of Moscow The Government of Moscow (russian: Правительство Москвы) is the highest executive body of state authority of Moscow. The Government of Moscow is headed by the highest official of the city of Moscow, i.e. the Mayor of Moscow. T ...

had learned to manipulate Zen.News (Yandex.News) search results by running a network of local online newspapers that provided positive coverage of city events. In many contexts, such as

Russo-Georgian War The 2008 Russo-Georgian WarThe war is known by a variety of other names, including Five-Day War, August War and Russian invasion of Georgia. was a war between Georgia, on one side, and Russia and the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of Sou ...

, anti-Putin protests in Russia, and

Russo-Ukrainian War The Russo-Ukrainian War; uk, російсько-українська війна, rosiisko-ukrainska viina. has been ongoing between Russia (alongside Russian separatist forces in Donbas, Russian separatists in Ukraine) and Ukraine since Feb ...

, the search results and Stories were assumingly manipulated, though Yandex always denied such accusations. In 2022, Meduza reported that Yandex censored Zen.News (Yandex.News) stories as a part of a behind-the-scenes agremenet with Putin's administration—and the Yandex employees knew it.

References

External links

Official website
{{Yandex Yandex software