A St. Petersburg local lawmaker wants to save Russians' souls by rewriting how they use online social media

Andrey Anokhin, a city councilman in St. Petersburg, has drafted legislationthat would force Internet users to access all social media through a state-operated portal and limit the amount of time they’re permitted to be online to three hours a day. The law would also ban underage Internet users from accessing social media at all from schools, orphanages, and other public spaces.

Anokhin says any social network that refuses to submit to this system would be blocked in Russia, though his legislation doesn’t account whatsoever for the potentially astronomical costs of building this new Internet infrastructure or blocking billion-dollar websites. Anokhin says these restrictions are necessary to protect Russians from moral corruption and nervous breakdowns, arguing that social media degrades users’ perception of reality.