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Signal messenger blocked in Russia, says Roskomnadzor
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoHardly the only thing blocked there. The internet in Russia is close to unusable without VPN if you are used to western content.
- mepian 2y agoIf I remember correctly, the earliest popular thing that they permanently blocked was LinkedIn for some reason.
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- isubkhankulov 2y agoLinkedin is a gold mine for professionals as well as government information gathering operations https://www.wired.com/story/linkedin-fake-profiles-state-act https://www.wired.com/story/linkedin-fake-profiles-state-act...
- ljlolel 2y ago404
- spacebacon 2y agohttps://www.wired.com/story/linkedin-fake-profiles-state-actors-scams/ https://www.wired.com/story/linkedin-fake-profiles-state-act... ors-scams/ wasn’t copied from url window it seems when user shared it.
- golergka 2y agoRussian government is very concerned about the brain drain over the past two years. Fortunately (for the russian government), western sanctions on Russia make it much harder for educated professionals to relocate.
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y agoUnfortunately, internet is close to unusable WITH a VPN. Unending captchas, blocks, bans, throttles, login requirements ...
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- canadiantim 2y agoIs telegram still blocked in Russia?
- para_parolu 2y agoNope. They got to some agreement
- cedws 2y agoRouting over Tor coming soon?
- mananaysiempre 2y agoThe built-in “censorship circumvention” toggle seems to be enough for now.
- WhereIsTheTruth 2y agoMost of TOR nodes are owned by the CIA/NSA There are also rumors of Signal being operated by them too https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/signal-facing-collapse-after-cia-cuts-funding https://english.almayadeen.net/articles/analysis/signal-faci... Whoever claims total anonymity in the US is full of crap https://www.engadget.com/authorities-reportedly-ordered-google-to-reveal-the-identities-of-some-youtube-videos-viewers-140018019.html https://www.engadget.com/authorities-reportedly-ordered-goog... All it takes is one backdoor or one engineered flaw https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/signal-downplays-encryption-key-flaw-fixes-it-after-x-drama/ https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/signal-downpl... Likewise, whoever promotes that kind of messaging tool overseas is complicit
- gtvwill 2y agoLol signals definitely backdoored. It's a darling of 5 eyes intel agencies. They love it and they wouldn't use it unless it was backdoored lol.
- Freak_NL 2y agoYouTube is reportedly throttled to near unusable levels too¹, although that seems to be done with enough deniability to back-track should it cause too much problems for the economy. In that respect StackOverflow is probably safe. 1: (Dutch) https://nos.nl/artikel/2532565-met-het-beperken-van-youtube-raken-russen-nog-verder-in-een-isolement https://nos.nl/artikel/2532565-met-het-beperken-van-youtube-...
- alamortsubite 2y agoToday it appears they shut it off completely: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/russian-users-report-mass-youtube-outage-amid-growing-official-criticism https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/russian-users-report...
- aquamar2 2y agoRussia seem to be more reliant on TikTok these days https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesfarrell/2024/05/02/russias-posting-more-to-tiktok---and-seeing-greater-engagement-with-its-posts-report-says/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesfarrell/2024/05/02/russias.... Make sense since TikTok is owned by their ally. This flurry of social media ban might signal the start of the end of Putin's regime, with sudzha's fall by Ukraine. Right now Ukraine can seize artillery storage and destroy rail lines anywhere behind the frontline with ease, and Russia seems paralyzed. If they soften any of the frontline to reinforce the interior, that frontline will collapse.
- heraldgeezer 2y agoTikTok is a completely different form of content. (Worse) Youtube has excellent documentaries, movies, news and commentary if you go beyond the default Mr Beast sloppa.
- aquamar2 2y agoTikTok is focusing on longer videos these days via allowing the video length to be longer, because short videos are a money sink. Meta realized this already as well, as Mark mentioned that they're losing 1B a year on short form videos.
- znpy 2y ago[flagged]
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- lostlogin 2y agoDoes this relate to the situation in Kursk Oblast?
- _heimdall 2y agoHard to say for sure obviously. The timing is pretty convenient, if the government is doing a poor job responding to an invading force they have good reason to limit communication among the public to tools they can control.
- worstspotgain 2y agoThis won't do much to stop the flow of information into Russia, but might hamper the flow within. I don't think it's meant to just affect the battlefield (and in that case it could have just been regionally limited.) It's more likely to be a preparatory move. I have a feeling that the risk of a nuke being used just went up.
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- renegade-otter 2y agoYes. They, amazingly, discussed it already on state propaganda TV - how much should people know? The regime really is concerned about controlling the narrative before it gets out of control. Neither panic nor clamoring for nuclear holocaust helps them here.
- Meekro 2y agoUnfortunately democratic nations sometimes go there, too. The UK has threatened to weaken encryption in a way that would force signal to leave. Other nations have made noises about it, too. UK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34936127 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34936127 EU: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40551260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40551260 Australia: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/signal-to-australia-good-luck-with-that-crypto-ban/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/12/signal-to-austra... Belgium: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31210432 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31210432
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- bilinguliar 2y agoThe genie is out of the bottle. Cryptography is already integrated deeply in out tech stack.
- lpcvoid 2y agoPutinist state simply cannot accept non-controlled media. No big surprise here.
- coolspot 2y ago[flagged]
- cedws 2y ago[flagged]
- abdulobdul 2y ago[flagged]
- kornhole 2y agoI think you mean to say Russia will not accept platforms controlled by NATO/US. Decentralized protocols such as XMPP, Matrix, Simplex, Session.. work fine and are not targeted for blocking.
- thriftwy 2y agoTelegram is not blocked and is often the main channel through which people get their news. Whatever stuff you want to see, you may consume there. Indeed, news on the web are going the way of newspapers.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoThough I really wonder why Telegram is not blocked given that it was historically.
- thriftwy 2y agoFor one, perhaps because Telegram does not take sides and does not take down Russian content. Perhaps because they had some agreement in the end, perhaps because they simply couldn't. In any case, it is now vital information infrastructure in ways YouTube isn't. Even though YouTube definitelt is critical. It's not just an amusement source.
- FlyingBears 2y agoRussia is trying to follow China's example to shed dependence on West controlled services and grow domestic alternatives. Which is long overdue since they don't have equitable access to these services.
- mechanical_bear 2y agoCutting yourself off from civilization is not the hallmark of a society that is growing in a positive direction.
- alamortsubite 2y agoHow does expelling foreign journalists fit into this plan?
- thriftwy 2y agoRussian domestic alternatives grew just fine without any blocking. Blocking stuff just angers people and teaches them to use VPN.
- trallnag 2y agoRussians can host videos on YouTube that get nuked on Russian alternatives
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- kornhole 2y ago[flagged]
- issafram 2y agoDelete this. It is open source
- kornhole 2y ago[flagged]
- ranger_danger 2y agoLast commit two days ago: https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server Please don't spread FUD. If you're really this worried (about what? the client is still open too, or use Molly-FOSS if you're that paranoid), run your own server too.
- kornhole 2y agoTMK most of the server code is open source but part is not. Therefore the service is not classified as open source. Try navigating into the spam-filter @ a30a761 folder to see that it is unavailable. I am not worried. I do run my own servers for various comms and know what information an admin can monitor and collect.
- issafram 2y agoiirc they needed something that wasn't open, specifically to block spam accounts
- rpdillon 2y agoThe way you phrase this makes it sound like Signal is compromised. I don't think that conclusion is warranted based on the evidence you've presented. The analyses you point to don't support this conclusion, either. Rather, they merely point out that the project got a government grant for $3 million. But projects like Tor were funded by the Office of Naval Research and the internet itself was funded by ARPA. I read HN for thoughtful, technical commentary. But this reads like a FUD.
- kornhole 2y agoRussia to block Google, IOS and Android. Aleksei Didenko, a member of the Russian State Duma, has said that Google, including its Android operating system and Apple's iOS, will soon be blocked in Russia. Didenko advised the public not to cling to services like YouTube, stating, "Soon Google will be blocked, along with Google Android. iOS will also be blocked, and this will not be our initiative." t.me/ForeignAgentIntel
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- padthai 2y agoSo they will not use Smartphones? I am not buying it.
- kornhole 2y agoGoogle has been blocked in all of China for many years. They mainly use AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and variants without any proprietary Google. Their IOS devices connect to servers in and run by China. Russia can do something similar, but they are giving people some warning and time to migrate. Russia has banned IOS for most government employees after the Operation Triangulation fiasco.
- netsharc 2y agoAs sibling commenter says, the China model is probably ideal for dictators. In China WeChat is used for everything: communicating, social media, payment (along with AliPay). And it doesn't take much imagination how effective that is for surveillance and control. They already delete posts that are "dangerous to the harmonious living" (i.e. things that are against the government narrative), and if you're afraid you'll get banned and lose your means of contact with friends (as well as a payment app needed for day to day living), you'd probably censor yourself. And monitoring payments is another method of surveillance, along with the monitoring of communications (even with E2E encryption, just knowing which people are talking to each other, and with what sort of intensity, is useful for surveillance). And Elon Musk wants to make a similar universal app out of the corpse of Twitter... ha, wouldn't we all like that. Ironically all the people who still defend him overlap with the ones who are yelling "The woke lefties want to control our speech!"
- MrDisposable 2y agoRussian here. Just to give you an idea of how aware of VPNs the general public is: I have a friend, she's 30 and she's never been tech-savvy or nerdy. A typical stay-at-home single mom focused on raising her kid. Today she asked me if I know of any good routers with built-in VPN support, and we had a chat about VPN protocols.
- issafram 2y ago[flagged]
- MrDisposable 2y agoThere's an upside to that: it's likely that in your environment such knowledge isn't necessary for everyday life.
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- grugagag 2y agoNeeds teach you things.
- liberalmongo 2y ago[flagged]
- throwuxiytayq 2y agoIf you have a point, you have failed to communicate it entirely.
- the_mitsuhiko 2y agoI prefer the situation to be like in Russia before 2014 or some other more optimistic times. I don't get much joy out of that China or North Korea might be worse.
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- sharpshadow 2y agoGood to hear that Signal is not cooperating. Russia is very cautious these days and punishes hard.
- kvemkon 2y agoReminds me of "Signal: Will leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees" (02.06.2024) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40551260 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40551260 More links in the other thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41204384 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41204384 OMEMO E2EE for XMPP has been made ready to be forced-disabled in the popular ejabberd XMPP server relatively soon after OMEMO adoption. https://github.com/processone/ejabberd-contrib/commit/d84204bdb88e1ac64ca817fde9057d3b5cd4ae65 https://github.com/processone/ejabberd-contrib/commit/d84204...
- roastedpeacock 2y ago> Signal: Will leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees Considering the Lavabit case [1] this reek of grandstanding to anyone else? Not saying Europe is panacea but considering the unaccountability of American intelligence or law enforcement the European position does seem more favourable. And to those who bring up policies such as Chat Control. The vote for that in Brussels has been postponed after enough outcry. [2] Hopefully it does not come back to life however them trying again under a different banner would not be a surprise either. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Connection_to_Edward_Snowden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lavabit#Connection_to_Edward_S... [2] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-vote-postponed-huge-success/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-vote-postponed...
- RadiozRadioz 2y agoI think Signal is a silly messaging system if the servers are all centralized enough to be able to be blocked and require a VPN. They forbid federation: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ . I am surprised that technical people use it; they see that the client and some of the server code is open sourced on GitHub and go all-in on the platform, instead of thinking critically about the actual messaging technology. Totally pointless messaging platform. Use something real like XMPP.
- rightbyte 2y agoXMPP? That is a protocol right? Can you name drop some good client and server software for using that?
- kornhole 2y agohttps://xmpp.org/software/ https://xmpp.org/software/ has a wealth of information about server and client SW. Here is a list of providers for a free account: https://providers.xmpp.net/ https://providers.xmpp.net/. I run my own XMPP server using metronome, but I also run a Simplex server I prefer to use.
- xmpp-enjoyer 2y agoOn top of the links shared - I would recommend Snikket (https://snikket.org/ https://snikket.org/) if you're getting started. They provide a server you can self host, and apps for Android and iOS. Everything is designed to work together and offer a good onboarding experience.
- crtasm 2y agoAnyone can run a proxy for their centralized servers: https://signal.org/blog/proxy-please/ https://signal.org/blog/proxy-please/
- RadiozRadioz 2y agoYes, _their_ servers. If I can't run a server and have others easily join it in a normal & intended user flow, we're back with the same centralisation of WhatsApp, just with a "source available" coat of paint.
- beardyw 2y agoSovereign countries are allowed to do pretty much what they want. This should be no surprise. I can see more like this happening as time goes on.