Russia inches closer to its splinternet dream

Russian users tried to access the service on March 4, but couldn't. For the previous six days, anyone trying to access the social networking site from within Russia had their internet speed slow to a crawl. The power went out.

The Russian state took social media's role in inciting dissent very seriously and went offline. It showed Russia's progress in creating a splInternet, a move that would effectively detach the country from the rest of the world's Internet infrastructure. 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.

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Even if Russia did have the people, inserting barriers into relatively open Internet infrastructure built over decades is far from straightforward. Controlling a country’s Internet requires two major components: separating yourself from the rest of the world, and cutting access from within. “There are lots of things going on on either side of the ledger,” says Madory. But both are harder for Russia than China because it’s starting from a comparatively open Internet, after years of engagement with the West. (China, by contrast, has been closed almost since the first people logged 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”—meaning it was insular by design.)

Russia's Internet regulators can demand that Russia's internet service providers block content or 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.