Bookmate app became unavailable for books critical of Russian and Soviet authorities after it was bought by Yandex. In particular, "Siren" drew attention to the fact that in the new version of the application, "Government House" by Yuri Slezkin and "Russia in a concentration camp" by Ivan Solonevich are not available.
The app also does not include the bestseller “Summer in a Pioneer Tie,” a book that falls under the law banning “LGBT propaganda” (we are not talking about the “not available” mark, as in previous cases, but about the non-disclosure of the book in the search).
Later, Twitter users noticed that many of Remarque's books, and even "The Adventures of Cipollino" are not available in the application.
In Bookmate itself, the loss of some books from the new application was explained by the temporary lack of rights to them:
“Yandex launched the Bookmate service on December 19, 2022. All content presented on the service, we license anew and independently, this is a lengthy process. Over time, the service catalog will expand – we continue to connect new publishers. If some books are not available to users in their exported library, this is primarily due to the fact that we currently do not have rights to them.
After acquiring a license to use the Bookmate book service, Yandex launched its own application, into which you can automatically transfer books from the previous application.