Rakuten CEO in Kyiv praises Viber's ability to counter Russian 'fake news'

(Patria) - Hiroshi Mikitani, founder and CEO of Rakuten Group, praised his company Viber's ability to counter Russian propaganda, Reuters reported.

"Unlike other social media, we made it clear that we would block all those fake news and propaganda from Russia," Mikitani told Reuters during a visit to Kyiv.

The 58-year-old spoke after meeting with senior Ukrainian officials earlier
during the day as part of a group of Japanese business leaders accompanying Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi on a visit to the Ukrainian capital.

"We met almost all the ministers and they are building a future strategy... they have a strategy
for macroeconomic growth and I am very encouraged and impressed," he said.

Viber, which was launched in 2010 and was acquired by Rakuten in 2014, has a market penetration rate of 98% in Ukraine. It is also popular in Russia.

Asked whether the app had faced hacking attempts from Russia, he
said there had been no breaches.

"Russia has never hacked us in the past. Sometimes, long before the war, we had requests, which we refused... we have no security concerns," he said.

Mikitani did not specify what was requested or by whom, but said Viber had never given any
information to any government. The billionaire entrepreneur has previously been vocal in his support for Ukraine and donated $6.77 million to its government at the start of the invasion.

Rakuten announced plans to cooperate with Ukraine's largest mobile operator,
Kyivstar, to provide Open Radio Access Network (Open RAN) telecommunications technology that uses software to run network functions in the cloud, something Mikitani touted as the technology of the future.

"All this hardware-based technology is technology maybe from 2010," he said.

"Software will be much more efficient, total operating costs will be reduced by maybe 30% to 50%."