Last week five messengers — WeChat, BlackBerry Messenger, LINE, Imo.im and the audiovisual chat Vchat — were banned by the Russian telecom regulator Roskomnadzor after refusing to be added to the official Russian “Registry of Information-Dissemination Organizers.”
The news has been reported by Roskomsvoboda, a Russian NGO that aims to “combat Internet censorship in Russia.”
Tencent Holdings, the Chinese company that holds WeChat, told Reuters it was checking the status of WeChat in Russia and was in talks with the relevant authorities.
WeChat is not hugely popular in Russia but Roskomnadzor’s move may affect Chinese tourists and Russians doing business with China.
Since 2014, the Russian authorities have been listing online services that “organize the dissemination of information.” Today, this list includes such websites as Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki (Russia’s two most popular social networks), the webmail service Mail.ru and dozens of other services.
Threema, “the world’s favorite secure messenger,” was added to the list earlier this spring.
However, Russia’s new “anti-terrorist” legislation, which was adopted last year and should come into force in 2018 or 2019, dramatically expanded the obligations of “information-dissemination organizers” — which explains why many international players are not willing to abide by these new rules.
In particular, digital players will be required to store for a period of six months any type of content from their users’ communications. Metadata on these communications will have to be kept during three years by telecom companies and one year by “information-dissemination organizers.”
Source: Roskomsvoboda (1, 2), CNBC.
