Russian authorities have begun restricting access to Telegram, one of the country’s most popular social media apps, as the government continues to push everyday Russians toward its own tightly controlled alternatives to foreign tech platforms.
On Tuesday, the government said it was restricting access to Telegram for the “protection of Russian citizens,” accusing the app of refusing to block content authorities consider “criminal and terrorist.”
Russia’s telecommunications regulator Roskomnadzor said in a statement that it would continue to restrict the operation of the Telegram messenger “until violations of Russian law are eliminated.”
A logical next step in Russia’s descent into the worst kind of police state. It will never quite be totalitarian, that era is over and anyway the Kremlin is too cynical and incompetent to actually control people’s thoughts. The model is obviously China. China has successfully locked down its internet and every dictator in the world has noticed.
The whole world is going that direction. Russia, north korea and china are leading the way, wester countries are more sly and subtle in how to do things, but america and UK are going the same direction.
OK but I tend to think that this kind of hopeless cynicism kinda risks being self-fulfilling. There are fundamental differences between Russia and the West, even ordinary people (especially in Western countries) do have agency, and nothing about the future is set in stone.