— Could this have been a test of blocking, disconnection from the global Internet?

[tanjimajuha20]

Mostly, Russians from Novosibirsk Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai and Moscow complained about non-working messengers. Users from St. Petersburg, Primorsky Krai, Bashkiria and Yakutia also reported errors

More than a thousand Russian users have complained about failures in Telegram and WhatsАpp. The problems with the messengers were recorded on the night of January 24.

Most of the complaints come dominican republic whatsapp number database from Novosibirsk Oblast, Khabarovsk Krai and Moscow. Users from St. Petersburg, Primorsky Krai, Bashkiria and Yakutia also report errors, according to data from the Sboy.rf service.

Users noted that messengers are only available with a VPN. Deputy Minister of Digital Development of Yakutia Andrey Suslov said that the failures are related to Roskomnadzor's preventive work. The agency itself did not confirm this information. It could also be a test of blocking or an exercise in case the country is disconnected from the global Internet, as happened in the summer of 2023.

What could be the cause of the failures? Comments from an expert in the field of internet restrictions, author of the Telegram channel "Esher II" Philipp Kulin:

— Preventive maintenance with disconnections can be done by providers, because my cable broke — I disconnected it. What can Roskomnadzor do? They have a disconnection option in their regulations, that is, if they need to do preventive maintenance, they disconnect these filters and at least take them away. In general, there are regulations, even if there are unscheduled exercises, there should be a warning, but Roskomnadzor conducts exercises as it sees fit, and not as in the regulations that it wrote for itself. Maybe this is just an experiment by Roskomnadzor on something, maybe they changed the software, ordered a new function in the software, tested it in several regions, and it showed itself successfully or, on the contrary, unsuccessfully, they got some result depending on what they wanted. Judging by how Roskomnadzor has been acting in the last two or three years, this is more like what I said.


- That's what I meant.

— Why were only WhatsApp and Telegram affected?

— Apparently, because there are often some protests there, they need to quickly filter, turn off. In 2018, they clashed with Telegram, it was important for them to block Telegram, and it began to resist. Then, most of the users were IT specialists, it was an unequal fight, everything failed. Now almost no one uses proxy telegram, it is not blocked, why?

Yesterday evening, users from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod, and Rostov-on-Don also complained about YouTube’s work, according to data from the Russian service Downradar.