NYT piece worth reading on what’s happening with Russia’s internet right now: Article
Quick background: Since early March, Moscow and St. Petersburg have experienced widespread mobile internet blackouts — not just blocked apps, but full mobile data shutdowns. Telegram is reportedly being blocked entirely starting in April.
The government regulator Roskomnadzor now has authority to disconnect Russia from the global internet entirely. Some regions are on “whitelist” mode — meaning everything is blocked except state-approved services like Yandex and government portals.
This article accompanied a longer piece about the impact of the outages. It’s scary.
I’m interested in whether or not there’s a way around this government censorship which could expand to Europe and North America under the right circumstances.
Russia is moving to a whitelist-only Internet, so any bypass will no longer work. That being said, Russian netizens have started using Meshstatic, a decentralised network that doesn’t use Internet. Article
For now, they use it to communicate with friends and family, for up to 100 km 10-50km. But it would technically be possible to set up clandestine networks where someone get access to normal internet.
They can try banning it but they can’t confiscate existing devices. Also, the cost of banning those is superior to the benefits, for now. (To be fair, that’s also the case of Russian internet whitelisting ).
I don’t think they will bother unless the Russian meshstatic community can figure out a way to create an actual internet (at minimum a public text platform/forum) with the tech.
The Tor threads are interesting. Thanks for posting them.
After reading them it seems like the most effective “solution” is social and legal, not technology. And, so far, at least from my limited outsider view, it’s a cat and mouse game with the Russian government marshaling unlimited resources.
Will organized political resistance, international pressure, and the economic self-harm Russia imposes on itself by cutting off its technical class from the global internet end this censorship nonsense?
A full whitelist accelerates brain drain among exactly the people Russia needs to maintain the infrastructure. So, maybe there are cracks in that infrastructure that can be exploited. But, this seems like a return to Soviet style censorship.
I wonder if Russia will be the next China GFW. I got an old grandfathered Yandex account from back when they do mailhosting for custom domain for free. Back then they allowed upto 1000 mailbox of 5gb each for $0, now gimped to just 5 mailbox due to the sanction and whatnot but its still works and actual somewhat nice with ipv6, caldav, caldav etc. Can’t send nor receive mail to Proton due to blockage at their isp level though.
