from the shutting-it-down dept
It’s funny just how often the actions of so-called “strong men” actually show just how scared and fragile they are. And if you want a more specific example of what I’m talking about, you can typically tell when a national government is feeling scared or weak, because that usually comes along with restrictions on a free and open internet. Worried that your horror-show of a government from a human rights standpoint might generate pushback and protests? Construct the Great Firewall of China. Concerned that social media sites might serve as rallying points against your election in Brazil? Have the actual police actually police the internet for anything you don’t like.
Launched a war of aggression against your neighbor because you thought you could annex an entire country in a few months, only to find out that you’re in a prolonged war of attrition that your own people might get severely tired of? Well, then you do what the Kremlin did, and iteratively crackdown on internet access and freedoms over several years. And Putin isn’t stopping.
Russia appears to be degrading performance or access to some targeted internet sites, such as YouTube, while also building out state-controlled alternatives to Western technology, which will inevitably be banned.
YouTube videos that won’t load. A visit to a popular independent media website that produces only a blank page. Cellphone internet connections that are down for hours or days. While it’s still possible to circumvent restrictions by using virtual private network apps, those are routinely blocked, too.
Authorities further restricted internet access this summer with widespread shutdowns of cellphone internet connections and adopting a law punishing users for searching for content they deem illicit.
They also are threatening to go after the popular WhatsApp platform while rolling out a new “national” messaging app that’s widely expected to be heavily monitored.
So it’s a three-pronged approach, designed purely to silence dissent and prevent the distribution of anti-government speech online as well as any coordination from opposition groups that could occur there. The banning or degradation of websites controls the information Russian citizens will see, the attacks on VPNs prevents them from getting around that control, and the mandated use of state-controlled messaging apps ensures that Russians won’t try to coordinate dissent activities online or, if they mistakenly do, provide the Russian government with a way to monitor that activity.
And I do mean mandated.
Starting next month, all new smartphones sold in Russia will come pre-installed with MAX, a government-developed messaging and services app. Officials describe MAX as Russia’s answer to China’s WeChat: an all-in-one platform for chatting, posting updates, making payments, and accessing government services.
The Kremlin has already begun testing MAX in schools, with authorities hinting it could soon become mandatory for teachers, parents, and even students. Experts warn that this level of integration will make MAX unavoidable in everyday Russian life.
Deputy head of Russia’s IT committee, Anton Gorelkin, recently warned WhatsApp to “prepare to leave the Russian market.” With nearly 100 million Russian users, losing WhatsApp would mark a massive shift in how people communicate.
Make no mistake, this is all a symptom of fear. Russia wouldn’t try to silence online information unless Russians were hungry for it and unless the Russian government didn’t want that information to get out. Ditto when it comes to the use of VPNs. And the Kremlin wouldn’t be trying to control how Russian citizens communicate online unless it feared it would be used to threaten government control. None of this represents strength, nor confidence. It’s fear.
Maybe this will work, though I doubt it, if given a long enough timeline for all of this to play out. The internet tends to route around censorship, as the saying goes, and I’m not sure the Russian people have been conditioned to accept the government’s word in the same way the Chinese people may have been.
But what I do know is that Putin and his government aren’t taking these actions because everything is going so well for them.
Filed Under: censorship, russia
Companies: whatsapp, youtube
