WhatsApp messenger may be completely blocked in Russia
30 November 07:04
Roskomnadzor has warned of a complete blocking of WhatsApp as it continues to ignore the requirements of Russian law.
“The messenger is used to organize and conduct terrorist activities in the country, to recruit their perpetrators, and to commit fraud and other crimes against our citizens,” the NRC said in a statement, according to "Komersant Ukrainian".
Restrictions have already been imposed on WhatsApp, the most popular messenger in the country with an audience of almost 100 million people: since August, audio and video calls have been blocked on the messenger.
“The imposition of restrictions on WhatsApp will continue,” the NRC said, adding that citizens are advised to switch to “national messengers.”
Whatsapp is already being blocked in a test mode in the Urals and Siberia, where locals are experiencing malfunctions in the messenger. On Friday, Muscovites faced problems with Whatsapp, sending more than 2,000 complaints about the app to the service Sboy.rf. on October 30, SMS registration on Whatsapp was blocked, as well as on Telegram, which has a fairly large audience in Russia (about 90 million people) and which the Russian authorities unsuccessfully tried to block in 2017.
With Telegram and Whatsapp, there is a “literal repetition of the Youtube scenario,” says Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Society for the Protection of the Internet. The messengers will be “slowly clamped down”, including blocking not permanently, but randomly, the expert believes, in order to move on “to complete blocking of the last platforms not controlled by the Kremlin”.
The actual blocking of Telegram may take place before the New Year.
