NEWSWATCH: “Silicon Valley Giants Face a Test in Russia; Russian censors are going after Telegram, but the pressure is on Amazon, Google and Facebook too” – Bloomberg/Leonid Bershidsky

April 19, 2018 JRL Russia List JRL NewsBlog, Media, Internet, Social Media, Television

Montage of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook Logos, adapted from image at nps.gov

“The Russian authorities’ first experiment with blocking a popular messenger application — Telegram — is not working out so far. The web censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, has blocked millions of internet addresses to beat Telegram into submission, but it’s still widely available even without any bypass mechanisms, while numerous legitimate sites have experienced downtime. … Russian social networks have exploded with sarcastic memes, but the merriment is likely misplaced. The experience will almost certainly push Russia toward the Great Chinese Firewall model, which will include reprisals on virtual private networks and Western cloud services. Roskomnadzor plans to block Facebook by the end of this year, and it will need to get better at it — and to get more resources — to succeed against such a formidable adversary. There’s no indication that the Kremlin will deny the necessary funding. …”