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Russia Is Sliding Towards Complete Internet Censorship And Isolation

March 31, 2022

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The invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent global sanctions imposed on Russia have increasingly complex implications for the social media platforms owned by Meta and their Russian users. For the first time since the beginning of the Russian invasion, Telegram has surpassed its main rivalWhatsAppin subscribers in Russia. Furthermore, Instagram and Facebook have been banned in Russia after their parent company Meta was declared an “extremist organization” by a Moscow court. Russia’s latest steps point to complete Internet censorship and isolation.

Telegram becomes Russia’s top messenger app

Telegram has overtaken WhatsApp and is fast becoming Russia’s most popular messaging tool, the mobile operator Megafon reports, with Russians flocking to the service as Moscow restricts some digital services.

Telegram’s main strengths are the ease with which multimedia can be transmitted, and its ability to facilitate communication channels that can have thousands of subscribers reading the same message in real-time. 

According to Telegram officials, the app has been seeing record installations since February 24, due to the restrictions Russia has imposed on other communications channels. According to the Telegram blog, Russia is also trying to block access to the chat network, without success.

At the same time, WhatsApp’s share of traffic has dropped from 48% to 32%, while Viber traffic dropped from 5% to 4%. At the moment, Telegram is the leading chat app in 82 regions, although it was popular in only 55 at the end of 2021.

According to Megafon data, Telegram also took the lead as the app with the highest traffic consumption per day: the average traffic consumption per service, per user is 101 megabytes; WhatsApp users spend an average of 26 megabytes per day; and Viber users 8 megabytes per day. 

Russian court finds Meta guilty of “extremist activity”

After the Meta-owned Facebook and Instagram had been blocked in Russia, a Russian court officially banned the two social networks for “extremist activity”.

“The activities of Meta [parent company of Facebook and Instagram] are directed against Russia and its armed forces. We demand its ban and the obligation to implement this measure immediately,” FSB spokesman, Igor Kovalevsky, told the hearingas quoted by Interfax agency.

A prosecutor also called for Meta to be banned “because of obvious signs of extremist activity”. He did, however, call for an exemption from the ban on WhatsApp, which also belongs to Meta.

On March 11, the Russian prosecutor’s office called for Meta to be classified as an “extremist organization”, which would pave the way for a ban on all its activities in Russia. This request follows Meta’s decision to allow violent messages against the Russian military and Russian leaders in connection with Moscow’s military aggression in Ukraine. 

According to the prosecutor’s office, Meta justifies “terrorist actions” and wants to incite “hatred and adversity” against Russians. According to the TASS news agency, a company representative told the court that Meta had meanwhile amended its rules to ban Russophobia and calls for violence. 

Facebook has 75 million users in Russia, while WhatsApp has 67 million users, and consequently the court’s decision affects 80 million Russian users. The difference between Roskomnadzor blocking the services, and a court banning them, is crucial for the end-user. While users were able to use Facebook or Instagram through a VPN service, which many Russians do, now, using these services has become illegal—even through services that bypass national regulations.

Russia’s Internet censorship 

Instagram and Facebook, like Twitter, have already been blocked in Russia—where they are virtually inaccessible without the use of a virtual private network (VPN). The websites of dozens of Russian and foreign media-houses, including the BBC, have also been blocked. Last week, telecoms regulator Roskomnadzor accused US giants, Google, and YouTube of “terrorist” activities. 

Russia’s Internet censorship technology, meanwhile, is becoming increasingly advanced, states Andrei Soldatov, the Russian journalist who authored The Red Web—a book on the Internet in Russia. People are increasingly relying on VPNs to access blocked websites by accessing connection points outside Russia, but there’s a risk that even those will be blocked by the government, Soldatov further reports. 

“For the Russians, it’s very dramatic, and it’s very fast [which] means people are not just trying to adjust, but to fight back,” said Soldatov, cited by The Washington Post. 

On March 23rd, Roskomnadzor restricted access to online service news after Google was accused of providing access to false information about Russia’s activities in Ukraine. The decision was made at the request of Russia’s Prosecutor General’s Office according to a Roskomnadzor press release. The online news service “provided access to many publications and materials containing false information (…) about the conduct of the special military operation on Ukrainian territory,” the statement said.

Since the onset of the Ukrainian invasion, several Western media outlets suspended operations in Russia—joining a growing number of multinationals boycotting the country in protest. In response, Russia seems to choose the path of isolation. The most recent decisions seem to be in line with the increasing Internet censorship and the policy of oppression promoted by the Kremlin regime.