Russia keeps moving towards digital isolation, lest any foreign influence infect its citizens. In recent weeks and months, we’ve seen similar blocks on WhatsApp and Telegram, the most popular messaging platforms in Russia. And YouTube is being so bandwidth-throttled as to be unusable.
Russian authorities are instead promoting the use of Max, “a government-backed messaging app that the group says gives officials full access to users’ private conversations.” As one might expect, it’s not wildly popular. The widespread use of VPN‘s can work to overcome some of this, but even that becomes problematic if the state wants to make their use more difficult, as we’ve seen in China.
Source: Moscow Times
Russia’s state media regulator said Thursday that it was restricting voice and video calls on Apple’s FaceTime, making it the latest foreign-made app to be effectively blocked inside the country.
Roskomnadzor said law enforcement agencies had informed it that FaceTime was being used “to organize and carry out terrorist activities” and to facilitate fraud and other crimes, according to a statement carried by state media.
The wording closely mirrored accusations the regulator issued last week against WhatsApp, which it also began restricting over what it called repeated legal violations tied to alleged terrorist activity.
