The Russian government blocked Instagram in the country a few days ago. Other social media are also victims. Russia is doing this to stay in control of what their citizens read online about the war. It is remarkable that Telegram remains online. However, this message service is full of (fake) news about the war.
Online war
Several social media have been blocked by the Russian government. According to Russia, these media are ‘extremist organizations’. On Facebook and Instagram it was allowed to speak badly about the Russian government and the country did not agree with this. Telegram now remains one of the few channels where Russians can still read news about the war with Ukraine. A lot of fake news is also shared via Telegram.
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Telegram has always been a player in this war. This is because the Russian government uses the messaging service to spread Russian propaganda and false information. In addition to this information, a lot of reliable news is also shared from outside. Many Ukrainians and Russians use it as one of their only news sources. This is especially important for the Russians, because they don’t have many news sources about that that are not controlled by the Russian state. That’s what the news agency said Reuters to say that several major news sites such as BBC News are also blocked in the country.
Telegram founders are Russian brothers
So many find it strange that Telegram is not taken offline, despite sharing news for which other channels are blocked. It is speculated that this is because Telegram was founded by two Russian brothers in 2013. They were Nikolai and Pavel Durov. According to critics, Pavel Durov was in close contact with Vladislav Surkov. Vladislav was previously the deputy chief of staff to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
But if we go back in time, we can see that Telegram was not always loved by the Russian government after all. In 2018, the messaging service was blocked in Russia. This was because the Russian security services were not allowed access to encrypted messages from Telegram. This blockade was only lifted in 2020 after an agreement between the two parties.
Telegram almost offline
Nevertheless, it was considered for a while to take Telegram offline as well. Pavel Durov announced in late February that he might want to block Telegram in Russia and Ukraine. He shared this in his Telegram channel which has about 680,000 subscribers. He indicated that he was concerned that Telegram was “increasingly becoming a source of unverified information”.
He encouraged the Russian and Ukrainian population to remain suspicious of the information shared on Telegram. Pavel also absolutely did not want the messaging service to be used to aggravate conflict or “foster ethnic hatred”. “As long as the conflict continues, I am considering partially or completely limiting Telegram’s operation,” Durov wrote.
Criticism for form of censorship
After Durov’s announcement, a lot of criticism soon followed. According to several people, Telegram would impose a form of censorship as soon as Durov imposes a blockade. It is expected that the blockage will not come (immediately). After his announcement, Durov did not say anything more about a possible blockade. Although he admits that Telegram does not have the capacity to stop the plethora of misinformation and fake news. It also appears that the Russian government has no immediate plans to block Telegram either. At the beginning of this month, the Russian government even called for government agencies via their Telegram channel to create a Telegram account.
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