Russian users tried to access the service on March 4, but couldn't. For the previous six days, anyone trying to access Twitter from within Russia had their internet speed slow to a crawl, no matter how fast their connection was. The power went out.
The Russian state took social media's role in inciting dissent very seriously and went offline. Russia's progress in creating a splinternet, which would effectively detach the country from the rest of the world's internet infrastructure, was demonstrated. It is getting closer to a move that would allow Russia to control conversations more tightly.
China is the gold standard of digital walled gardens because it has managed to separate itself from the rest of the digital world with much success. The International Center for Human Rights and Democratic Development estimated that China spent $20 billion on censorious telecom equipment by 2001. The Great Firewall of China is a system that checks all traffic entering the country against a block list. Three choke points are used to block internet traffic from entering China. Mad believes that it is not possible for Russia to copy the Chinese approach. They don't have the people to do it. Russia is a long way from becoming like China.
Even if Russia had the people, it's not easy to put barriers into the internet. Control of a country's internet requires separation from the rest of the world and cutting access from within. After years of engagement with the West, Russia is starting from a comparatively open internet. China has been closed almost since the first people log on to the internet, following a February 1996 order giving the state absolute control over its design and establishing a prohibition on inciting to overthrow the government or the socialist system.
Russia's internet regulators can order internet service providers to block or not complete traffic requests. They can remove internet traffic from sites that are unsuitable for everyday Russians, so that any individual browser can't be used in the rest of the world. Russia has more than 3000 internet service providers, which implement diktats at different speeds. Depending on the technique they use, circumventing the block can be easier or harder.
Russian internet service providers reset user connections as they try to access websites, leaving them trapped in a loop of unfulfilled requests. By hijacking a request from a web browser, they prevent you from connecting to the intended website or service. Russia uses other blocking techniques. It is possible to block access to specific websites by stopping connections to the tsl mechanism that governs most internet connections. Another method is to deliver block notices to users who try to access a website by changing the domain name system. If a browser cannot access the phonebook, it cannot load a website.
The system can work, but it has flaws. Russia has made some progress in trying to correct that, but it has been difficult to implement nationwide blocks or bars on websites deemed undesirable. That is because of the way Russian internet infrastructure works.
Alena Epifanova, a research fellow at the German Council on Foreign Relations, says that Russia's internet is badly embedded into the global one.
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