Digital resistance of Pavel Durov - continuation of the conflict between Telegram and Roskomnadzor

The situation around Telegram blocking continues to grow hot and the business takes an unexpected turn. Roskomnadzor, apparently, decided to frighten not only Durov, but also other Internet projects, as massively blocks all indiscriminately, and the creator of Telegram himself is ready to give out millions of dollars in bitcoins for his support. What does all this mean and how are things developing at the moment?

Mass locks from Roskomnadzor

On April 16, the verdict of the Tagansky Court in Moscow was put into effect, but for some reason Telegram works as before. How does Roskomnadzor block websites? This organization maintains a register of sites prohibited from displaying, which it regularly updates. Internet service providers are required to block access to these very sites for their users. Blocking in this case can be carried out specifically by domain or by IP address - in the first case, a specific site is blocked, in the second - all sites on the specified IP, which is not very convenient and completely dishonest.

Due to the fact that all supporters of the blockade - deputies, Roskomnadzor, the court and others - did not delve deep into the essence of their demand, in practice its implementation proved to be difficult. The verdict has not yet been put into effect, since it is not possible to block all the servers that Pavel Durov uses. And since Telegram can use different IP addresses and it is easy to change them, then it is not possible to inflict a point strike on Telegram. And although the blocking of the "cart" is not enough, but it clearly felt on her other sites and services that Durova has nothing to do.

Tracking IP-address of the Telegram, Roskomnadzor blocks them, but since the addresses are banned by the blocks, all the sites that are located on them get blocked from it. The situation reached the point of absurdity, because the work of the terrible department did not work out of jewelry - millions of sites fell into disfavor, and Telegram is alive and well and seems to be feeling fine.  

According to the latest data, Roscomnadzor, due to Telegram, blocked about 18 million IP-addresses and this is the largest lock in history. From the actions of the agency suffered Google and Amazon, social networks and online games. At this time, the activity of subscribers of Russian-language channels in Telegram was increased by 30 million views.

Why can not Telegram block?

According to experts, Roskomnadzor has a very slim chance of completely blocking Telegram. This is more like fighting windmills: only the department blocks IP addresses that are relevant for Telegram, as Durov moves to new ones. This can continue indefinitely, because the blocking will be removed from the addresses that are not related to the "cart" and the messenger will be able to switch to them again. The situation for Roskomnadzor is aggravated by the fact that it will take about a minute for Telegram to switch to a new address, while it will take at least an hour for the agency to block it. These address moves are made so that users can use the messenger without using VPN and had no inconvenience in working with him.

Similarly, experts argue that it is likely the invention of Durov and other methods of circumvention of the lock - this is only a matter of finance, which the developer is ready to spend on his resistance to Roskomnadzor. According to preliminary estimates, such actions can be very expensive and require up to 1 $ million per day. If you remember that not so long ago via ICO developer attracted 1.7 $ billion., then we can safely say that in this respect Durov is omnipotent.

There are separate opinions that such big money will not be required and, in general, at present the Telegram team is developing a peer-to-peer protocol. In case of its implementation, Durov will no longer need third-party servers and any IP-addresses, as the users themselves will perform the role of nodes - while there are at least one user in the Telegram network, the whole system will exist.

At the moment, Pavel Durov operates according to a different scheme and provides information about new servers through push notifications, which users can easily connect to. Roskomnadzor cannot prevent the possibility of sending such notifications. The only risk that currently exists is the removal of the Telegram application from the App Store and Google Play. Is it possible, at the moment it is difficult to answer, the department can demand removal only from Russian stores, while it is not known what position these large marketplaces will take. And in this case, Telegram will not disappear, but installation and updates will be difficult, which means that some users will simply switch to other messengers.

Digital Resistance and Cash Grants from Pavel Durov

Durov did not limit himself only to ensuring the stable operation of the messenger, despite the blocking. The developer started something more and it can be safely called a real war with Roskomnadzor. Although Pavel Durov notes that Russian users make up only 7% of the Telegram market, which is not a significant percentage of the total audience, but for personal reasons, the project team will continue to fight for the Russian market. The reason for this is the infringement of the digital freedom of users, and for Durov it has already become a matter of principle to resist the absurd actions of officials.

In support of Internet freedom, the founder of Telegram organized so-called "digital resistance", whose goal is to uphold the rights of Internet users and remove obstacles that impede progress. Durov not only put forward the idea, but even came up with a symbolic logo, which has already disperse to memes on the Internet.

Durov's movement for Internet freedom is not empty words. Since Roskomnadzor began to fight against proxy servers and VPNs, spreading the requirement to block them for extremism and unrest (this is how the supervisory authority designated Telegram support), Pavel Durov stood up for these services. The “cart” developer is ready to support resource administrators financially and plans to allocate millions of dollars in bitcoins for these purposes over the course of the year.

As for Roskomnadzor, the agency has suffered a lot from the blockade of Telegram, numerous Ddos attacks were carried out on the official site of the supervisory authority, which even paralyzed the work of the resource for a while. Who was the initiator of these attacks remains unknown, Durov himself and his supporters can be implicated.

Can Telegram be blocked?

As expected, the world community did not remain silent and the actions of Roskomnadzor were criticized to the nines - and not only individuals, such as Snowden, spoke out, the United Nations also issued its verdict. Public figures condemned the actions of the department, calling them censorship, a lack of understanding of the importance of strong encryption and an attempt to break the entire Internet. Russian deputies in numerous interviews answered that they do not see a problem in blocking Telegram, do not consider such actions a violation of someone's rights and freedoms, and, in general, are very optimistic.

This begs the question: is it possible, given the current circumstances, to somehow block Telegram? In the literal sense of the word, this is most likely impossible, but Roskomnadzor can use a variety of methods in order to reduce the number of users. If we talk about the complete cessation of user access to the messenger, then this is possible only if the Internet is blocked in general, and it will be possible to connect only to a certain list of "white" sites. 

There is one small but important nuance in this whole story. After the appearance of information about the blocking of the "cart", an active propaganda of the domestic messenger "There there" began, which completely copies Durov's project and, moreover, proudly calls himself the "Telegram killer". The developer of the application is Mail.ru, and recently there have been many clearly custom-made publications about the messenger on major news resources and even in high-profile print media. It is worth noting that the messenger expressly states that the content of the correspondence is transferred to third parties and has no privacy. Given the active advertising of the little-known "Tam Tama", Telegram blocking takes on a new meaning. But we will not say anything, the development of the situation will put everything in its place. 

The degree of conflict between the freedom-loving messenger and the state oversight body continues to rise. It is difficult to imagine what scale it will reach, because the parties firmly stand on their positions and are not going to give up, just as they are not going to choose methods. In this situation, not just a developer who does not want to obey the laws came into contact with a body that does its job - the struggle is between freedom of speech and censorship, constitutional human rights and their infringement. It is worth paying tribute to Pavel Durov, who once again proves that a person can resist the system, and there are a lot of means and methods to defend one's position, the main thing is not to give up and not give up before life's difficulties, even if you have a very strong and powerful opponent in front of you .