Russian authorities have begun restricting access to Telegram, one of the country’s most popular social media apps, as the government continues to push everyday Russians toward its own tightly controlled alternatives to foreign tech platforms.
On Tuesday, the government said it was restricting access to Telegram for the “protection of Russian citizens,” accusing the app of refusing to block content authorities consider “criminal and terrorist.”
Russia’s telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor said in a statement that it would continue to restrict the operation of the Telegram messenger “until violations of Russian law are eliminated.”
They tried (and failed) before the war too. Telegram has no privacy, poor security, but they are really good at evading blocks.
You can configure a proxy in the client, though it’s a game of cat and mouse. Cheburnet will only grow in its traffic filtering capabilies. It’s a stupid move since it prevents western audiences from learning what’s going on in a less censored environment. People who bother installing MAX will be a tiny minority.
There’s already been a trend of moving all the government chats (schools, hospitals, etc) to MAX. So, many people who need access to these services (especially parents of school children) have it already installed. So now blocking telegram isn’t seen as much of an issue for the majority of people. So I guess the government has already won the battle, which is a shame
It still works without proxy for my family (as of earlier today), except for calls. I don’t know if this is telegram doing some block evasion or the block hasn’t kicked in fully yet.
In any case, unless they ban like 80% of outside internet, there will still be a few obfuscated VPN servers & tor bridges working. Everyone who knows their stuff will be able to access the outside, same as in China.
Yes, but the majority will be locked out and move on to MAX. I expect that most contries will be moving to a Great Firewall Internet model. In case of Cheburnet for a wholly autonomous mode of operation, in case of a hostile disconnect.