Russia’s digital Gulag

Hello! This week we look at Russia’s plans to significantly tighten control and surveillance on the internet through a spate of new laws, restrictions and punishments.

Online crackdown looms

Russia’s parliament has spent all summer passing a raft of prohibitive legislation to give the authorities more control and oversight of the online space. Starting on Monday, it became forbidden to search online for “extremist” content, advertise VPNs or even place adverts on Instagram. Every smartphone sold in the country must have a new “national messenger,” app — owned by a friend of Vladimir Putin — pre-installed, while migrants will face 24-hour surveillance through a tracking app that requires GPS be permanently switched on.

Maximum control: the national messenger

The most noticeable of all the changes for most Russians is the requirement that the Max messenger app come pre-installed on every smartphone and tablet sold in Russia. Max is an app created by internet conglomerate VK, which is owned by Putin’s pal Yury Kovalchuk. A decree issued by Putin said that Max should become Russia’s “national messenger” to replace WhatsApp or Telegram.

Go back to the start of the summer and no one had even heard of Max. But in early June, Vladimir Putin spoke of the need to switch to a domestically developed messenger. VK, in its role as the main state provider of online services, hastily rushed out a rough version to the market. It looked like a poor imitation of Telegram, with limited functionality. Nevertheless, the state hailed it as Russia’s new national messenger and quickly introduced amendments that required it to be installed on all new phones.

The main reason for applying the “national messenger” tag was to spike any possible competitors. The authorities dare not completely close down WhatsApp and Telegram, which are by far the top messengers in Russia with tens of millions of users. But just like they did when they started throttling YouTube, they are trying to hobble the foreign services to push users to give in and switch to the Russian alternative. In mid-August they started blocking the ability to make calls through WhatsApp and Telegram. At the same time a massive promotional campaign for Max was rolled out across Russia, highlighting the opportunity to make uninterrupted calls.

The authorities poured all their resources into marketing Max — a commitment that extends far beyond paid-up advertising. In a supposed bid to thwart telephone fraud, banks were ordered in June to stop contacting clients via WhatsApp and Telegram. Now they are actively integrating their services with Max. Other leading companies received a “recommendation” — universally understood to be an order — to integrate their chat-bots with Max. Senior officials, Russian celebrities and influencers all talked up the new app, and state bodies started using it.

This is just the start of the forced transfer of Russian citizens to the new system, which is following the familiar playbook of direct coercion. Staff in the public sector and at government agencies are forced to use Max at work. With the new school year, all Moscow schools officially moved to the new app, even if just one day before the education minister promised that no teacher would be forced to use Max. By law, the authorities cannot do that. With this mass campaign it is likely that soon we will be writing about how Max uptake has rocketed from zero. That’s bad news for users and privacy. Unlike WhatsApp and Telegram, which use servers based in the United States, Russia’s special services will likely be able to read messages on Max in real time.

Unfollowed: Finishing off Instagram

At the same time, the authorities are looking to finish off other online foreign services that they have already heavily targeted. A new ban on placing adverts on the resources of organizations dubbed “extremist” and blocked websites came into force on Monday. The primary target is Instagram, owned by Meta, which the Russian authorities branded an “extremist organization” at the start of the war after reports it would not censor posts calling for violence against Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Since then, both Facebook and Instagram have been blocked in Russia.