![]() In Russia, WeChat and Line are not the most popular instant messengers, but nevertheless they're used by our citizens to communicate with relatives, friends, and colleagues in Central Asia and South-East Asia, where these messengers are popular. In April, following weeks of organized strikes by truckers against a federal road tax, Roskomnadzor blocked Zello, a push-to-talk app popular among protest organizers.Īrtem Kozlyuk, head of Roskomsvoboda, spoke to RuNet Echo about the implications of WeChat being blocked in Russia: The move against China’s biggest messaging app is just the latest in an ongoing crackdown on messengers, including recent decisions to block BlackBerry Messenger, Naver’s Line, and Vchat - also for failing to register with Moscow. Websites can avoid the hassle of setting aside this information by granting Russian officials unfettered, constant access to their entire data stream.Īccording to the Internet rights watchdog Roskomsvoboda, Russian censors have already blocked more than two dozen IP addresses linked to the domains and services of Tencent, the maker of WeChat. The list was introduced following the passage of a federal law that requires websites to store all Russian users’ metadata (“information about the arrival, transmission, delivery, and processing of voice data, written text, images, sounds, or other kinds of action”) and make it accessible to the Russian authorities. ![]() Since 2014, the Russian government has managed a list of online services that “organize the dissemination of information.” Today, this list includes websites like Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki (Russia's two most popular social networks), the image board 2ch.hk, the email client, and dozens more services. According to Roskomnadzor, WeChat failed to register with the federal government as an “information-dissemination organizer,” which is technically required of a wide range of websites and online services. On May 4, Russia’s federal censor blocked WeChat, China’s largest mobile messaging app.
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