We all know that when it comes to the Internet, China is a bubble.. And only because of the Great Firewall that filters access to external information, but also because it constitutes a technologically insular ecosystem in which the species (online services) are for the most part different from those present in other countries, and in which the few ‘invasive’ species that enter their territory do so with limitations and a high level of supervision.
So, for example, we talk about Baidu as the ‘Chinese Google’, and Weibo as the ‘Chinese Twitter’. E-mail or instant messaging services are also different for Chinese users. And among the big countries, there is only yet another in circumstances (increasingly) similar to China: Russia.
It has been common, for a long time, to talk about ‘runet’ referring to the corner of the Internet where Russian tools for Russian speakers predominate: Yandex instead of Google search, Mail.ru instead of GMail or VK.com instead of Facebook.
The censorship laws, first, and the mutual commercial blockades between the West and Russia derived from the war in Ukraine have also influenced the popularity and operation of foreign platforms within the ‘Runet’.
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WhatsApp, MS Teams, Telegram…: know the current members of the blacklist
And now Russia has taken another step in that direction. In this case, against messaging appsWell, a new law that came into force yesterday (“Law on information, information technology and information protection”) prohibits the use of various foreign platforms by public administrations, financial institutions and state companies, as well as their employees.
Although the ban does not affect ordinary users for now, the measure will inevitably boost the growth of Russian alternatives, since it prevents, for example, using these messaging platforms to make online payments or to interact in any way with the Administration. .
For now, the Roskomnadzor (Russian Internet regulator) has published a blacklist of messaging apps that are subject to the new law. It does not pretend to be exhaustive, and the door is left open to include new apps, but for now all relevant foreign (not only western, also chinese) applications have been incorporated:
- Discord.
- Microsoft Teams.
- Skype for Business.
- Snapchat.
- Telegram.
- Threema.
- viber.
- WhatsApp.
- WeChat.
It must be made clear that, although many people see Telegram as a Russian app because its creator, Pavel Durov, is Russian and created the app there, he also fell out with the elites close to Putin (who maneuvered to wrest control of the VK network he had created from him) and opted for exile, establishing Telegram headquarters in the United Arab Emirates. So the platform, which was already totally blocked in its country of origin for a while, more than meets the conditions established by law to be part of the blacklist.
Via | InfoSecurity Magazine
Image | Based on original by Nicholas Raymond