8:42 am: In Russia, Telegram and WhatsApp still escape blocking
Russia has tightened the screws on the information that can circulate on the war in Ukraine. Since the start of the invasion, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram have been successively deactivated in Russia, while TikTok has, on its own, suspended the ability to upload new content. And the Kremlin blocked many media sites over which it had no control.
“I think it’s unlikely that Russia will ban Telegram, because they lack platforms to operate on,” said Princeton University researcher Sergei Sanovich. Criticized for the lack of moderation of its content, even if it claims to devote several hundred of its employees to it, the messaging system thus offers one of the rare major channels for pro-Russian speeches which are framed on the other major foreign social networks. But the Kremlin, which had already tried to ban the application in 2018, could be tempted to recover conversations between users, which are not automatically encrypted.