Putin may want to make sure that young people do not become a counterweight to war in Russia with the help of Finnish closures, writes ‘s data editor Satu Helin.
Russia began military action against digital waste even before it struck Ukraine with its missiles.
On February 23, the day before Vladimir Putin’s declaration of war, Roskomnadzor, a Russian media watchdog, sent a letter to Google.
It was the beginning of the fierce pecking of Russian and big American Finnish channels.
As soon as the Russian invasion began, for example Facebook denied (switch to another service) Ads for Russian state media accounts. Russia responded quickly, saying it was “starting to restrict access to Facebook.”
In the days that followed, Facebook blocked the accounts of Russia’s propaganda channels Russia Today and Sputnik across Europe. It linked false news warning tags to posts that linked to the Russian state media. Facebook also made it difficult to find postings by Russian state actors.
Similar means to Facebook has previously used, for example, to eradicate disinformation related to the corona pandemic or the U.S. presidential election 2020.
Now just facing a big state that thinks it doesn’t necessarily need Western somebody platforms for anything.
All this tells about it, how Russia is entering a state of war within its own country as well. It includes fully centralized communication.
The Russian regime has been systematically undermining freedom of expression for years. In addition, the iron-fired Roskomnadzor oversight body can make quick decisions about shutting down certain media or even the entire Internet.
Yet the blocking of social media channels is, in principle, a more robust weapon than the Russian leadership would necessarily need.
Although especially on Instagram and Twitter There are many users in Russia, Western social media channels are not as popular there as in Finland.
By far the most used channel based on the number of messages (you switch to another service) Vkontakte, a Russian company that quotes a lot from Facebook. About 400 million messages are downloaded there every month. It is followed by Instagram with about 130 million messages. Less than 35 million messages a month are uploaded to Twitter, Youtube and Facebook each in Russia.
On the other hand, Russians who actively use soma are especially young, who may not be particularly interested in Russia’s traditional and main propaganda tool; on television. Therefore, the Russian administration may think that the someblocks may be controlling the counterattack of the war that is waking up to young people.
By blocking the Somek channels, the Russian administration has accepted that the decision will bring about a visible change in the daily lives of quite a few ordinary Russians.
And it is usually the case that such changes are made as little as possible in a crisis situation so that the panic mood does not rise.
Now the Russian administration does not care about the fright of the people.
This may also be due to the fact that, for example, sanctions already affect people’s daily lives in any case.
So far, Russian users are also able to bypass Facebook and Twitter brackets quite easily using a VPN connection that hides the user’s location information.
If with Facebook and Twitter once the formula is repeated, Youtube may be the next channel to drop off the Russian network.
Youtube still operates in Russia, although it has also limited the visibility of Russian state channels in its service. At the end of February, Russia demanded that Google lift these restrictions on Ukrainian territory.
Even more on Youtube, the Kremlin is probably considering the future of the messaging service Telegram.
Many media outlets otherwise blocked in Russia have a Telegram channel through which news can be followed. For the time being, these channels are still accessible from Russia. The Kremlin has tried to block the Telegram several times in recent years, however failed (switching to another service). In the summer of 2020, Russia announced that it would provide a service to be.
A little longer term the question is how long Russia will stay on the global internet at all.
There has been talk for years that Russia is preparing to launch its own intranet, as it were. It would have no connection outside of Russia at all.
According to experts, the system is already technically ready.
Probably the biggest hurdle to the plan so far has been that falling off the international web would be catastrophic for Russian business. That would mean that even the last connections with the outside world would be cut off.
If Putin feels that this still doesn’t matter enough, disconnecting from the international network may be a few clicks away.
You can discuss the topic until Thursday at 11 p.m.
This is ‘s daily analysis of the current theme of the Russian invasion