The Russian Government seems to be having a short temper roll, literally. It might be hard to find a handful of websites on the Internet today that haven’t been threatened by the Russian government on a complete block because of one thing or another. And Reddit seems to be on top in that list.
The multi-functional (entertainment, social networking, and news) website was recently threatened by Roskomnadzor, essentially Russia’s FCC, on Vkontakte, Russia’s home-brewed version of Facebook, against a complete blockade. The post says that folks at Roskomnadzor have asked Reddit to remove the offending thread, which teaches users how to grow cannabis, and as of yet, their cries were in vain.
Those who have contacts with the [Reddit] administration – ask them to check their email for messages from Roskomnadzor, otherwise… a number of operators may block the entire site,”
the Vkontakte post reads, according to a rough translation.
Though information on the exact thread that triggered this development hasn’t been released in public, but the post removal request was made on behalf of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service.
Rewind to 2 years ago, the online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, was blacklisted by the Russians in 2013 for including an explanation on “Cannabis Smoking”. Many other websites have also been banned along the way that criticized Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Facebook had the block nook in its neck because of a few gay emojis the web giant offers. The same happened with YouTube over alleged copyright violations. The PirateBay was also censored for providing users with instructions on how to use virtual private networks, the Pirate Bay’s Pirate Browser and the anonymity software Tor.
Russia’s Internet blacklist is expanding exponentially by the day and I am guessing, by the end of this year, the Internet in its entirety will be clubbed off of Russian homes if they continue at this rate.
