The digital curtain over the Russian Internet is falling in full force, leaving millions of users in an information vacuum. Roskomnadzor has officially moved from annoying traffic slowdowns to uncompromising “deletion“ of popular platforms from the network. This time, the giants WhatsApp and YouTube fell under the guillotine, whose main domains were deleted from the National Domain Name System (NDNS). What until recently seemed like a temporary measure to combat fraud is now a final digital sentence.
How does this mechanism of “silent“ blocking work? It all comes down to the state DNS infrastructure, which is the backbone of the so-called “sovereign Internet“. When an address like whatsapp.com is removed from this database, your browser simply stops understanding where the resource you’re looking for is located. The result? Instead of your favorite videos or chats, users are faced with dry system error messages. Operators who refuse to comply with these new rules are threatened with hefty fines, which leaves virtually no useful way to circumvent censorship legally.
Interestingly, the purge is not limited to Meta-platforms. The blacklist already includes Discord, Signal, and a number of independent media outlets that were “unplugged” from the Russian segment over the past year. While technical domains like wa.me are still slipping through the cracks, the overall picture is clear: Roskomnadzor is tightening the noose around Telegram and WhatsApp, justifying its actions with “non-compliance with the law.” Well, the times when the internet was an open territory are clearly a thing of the past, and Russian users will have to prepare for a new, highly restricted digital reality.