Instagram has been unavailable in Russia since Monday. That’s what Roskomnadzor, the Russian government agency that deals with telecommunications, ruled in the past few days, arguing that Meta, the US company that controls Instagram and Facebook, allowed its users to post hate speech to the Russian people.
In fact, the real reason is linked to the Russian government’s willingness to further restrict the opportunities for Russian citizens to obtain information from independent sources. In the days before, the Russian government had already blocked access to Facebook and Twitter, but the Instagram block is considered a much more relevant measure and with greater consequences for the Russian population. The reason is the greater spread of the social network in Russia compared to the first two, especially among young people.
After Vkontakte (VK), a kind of Russian Facebook, Instagram was the country’s most popular social network until Monday. According to Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram, there are currently 80 million users of the social network in Russia, more than half of the country’s 145 million inhabitants.
The widespread use of Instagram in Russia has meant that the Russian government’s decision to block it has had consequences that have not previously been seen in the country: compared to the unavailability of Facebook and Twitter, in this case many Russians Users publicly complained about Russia’s choice to block the social network. Normal users did it, but above all the socalled “influencers”, people whose popularity depends largely on Instagram and who have actually made their presence on the social network their profession.
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Many of them had published posts and videos saying goodbye to their followers and inviting them to follow them on other platforms in the days before the social network was blocked. Some had appealed heartily and in tears, expressing their regret and dissatisfaction with the government’s decision.
Olga Buzova, for example, a singer known in Russia for participating in a reality show and who has more than 23 million followers on Instagram, said in a video published last Saturday: “I’m not afraid to admit that I don’t want to lose you. I have shared my life, my work and my soul here. I didn’t do this as a job, it’s part of my soul. It’s like a part of my heart and my life is being taken away from me.”
In addition to the popularity of influencers, the blocking of Instagram will inevitably affect the work of many people who use the social network as an ecommerce platform in Russia. For example, Inga Mela, a jewelry designer who uses Instagram to promote her brand but also to find ideas, inspiration, projects and suppliers, told the Financial Times. “It’s hard for me to imagine my life without this app,” he said, commenting on the pad.
Even before the Russian government’s decision to make Instagram unavailable, many users had started opening accounts on other social networks, but most notably on Telegram, one of the most popular messaging systems in the world after WhatsApp. Unlike the latter, it allows you to create channels that work a bit like public profiles on social networks. The channels had allowed many of these individuals to continue posting content and staying in touch with their followers.
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Many are also using Telegram to bypass censorship imposed by the Russian government on all media in the country, preventing them from speaking about the invasion of Ukraine as a war, with the approval of a new law criminalizing those who Spread fake news. , this is news that goes against the line of the government. Content published on Telegram is not subject to internal moderation, which allows the dissemination of messages that would otherwise be censored. Apparently, this also allows the opposite, namely the spread of false news conveyed by channels created to make propaganda for the Russian government.
Those who want to continue using Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter in Russia do so with VPN services, an acronym that stands for “Virtual Private Network.” These simplistic services are designed to trick the detection mechanisms of IP addresses or those addresses that identify your country of origin and replace them with those of a country of your choice.
Using VPN technology, a person living in Russia can then connect to the Internet as if they were in another country. According to data from the analysis service Top10VPN, on Monday after the Instagram blockade, access requests to VPN services in Russia increased by 2,692 percent compared to the daily average recorded in the week before the invasion of Ukraine.