To Block or Not to Block

In the morning of November 10, 2016, some Internet articles announced LinkedIn business network, that has been operating in Russia more or less successfully since 2000’s, being blocked in the Russian Internet by the Moscow city court order.

This means that LinkedIn is the first social network resource aggregating personal data blocked by the law of the Russian Federation for Personal Data Protection as of September 1, 2015. Within the provisions of the law, all social media of the Russian Internet must move their personal databases to Russia. It is hard to tell, if this decision will gain critical resonance among the Russian business community, as this network is mostly used by the people who look for a job and who want to expand their range of business contacts, rather than by the teenagers whose communication with the external world is limited by Vkontakte, Facebook, and Twitter. LinkedIn is a large globally renowned network, now being bought by Microsoft and actively employed by recruiting agencies like Headhunter.  

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Bypassing the interlock is not a problem with a VPN extension, though now one should mind the law passed in the autumn of 2015, that can affect the decision to use such extensions. In 2016 another online resource—the largest Russian file sharing service rutracker.org—was blocked by the Moscow city court order, though this case is an example of multiple copyright infringements, which makes the court decision legitimate. Other social media in Russia whose servers are located in the U.S. or other Western countries (some LinkedIn servers are located in Ireland) are likely to face the similar fate.

In this context, Russia has joined the group of countries who block social media and other online resources by the national court or government order. And these countries are definitely being criticised by the global community for the violation of human rights, censorship, and even Internet fragmentation promotion. Most often such decisions are connected to the political environment and sensitive relations of the country with the Western partners.

After the «Arab Spring» events and Ukraine revolution the government of the autocratic countries or the ones transiting to it started to clearly understand that social media is not only a platform for teenagers’ to communicate, get acquainted, and recommend a movie or a book. It is also an uncontrolled platform for information transfer, which can have a serious political impact on the attitudes of the citizens, especially the ones aged 18 to 35.

The most famous examples of the social media being blocked are China, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey. Almost in all these countries—except North Korea, I guess, where the Internet has always been banned and only been used by rare foreign tourists—all the artificial blocks can be bypassed with the help of VPN or Tor. Since 2009 China has been blocking all social media and people’s Internet user freedom is very limited there, though these limitations can be bypassed with the help of software and extensions designed by the Chinese engineers and dissidents. The Facebook ban was lifted in Shanghai in 2013. Obviously, Mark Zuckerberg’s dream  to persuade the Chinese government to open the platform will generate fantastic profit for a rather well-off Facebook company. A similar situation happened in Iran in 2009 after the presidential elections. This is a state committee of 13 members that defines what content should be publicly available and what has to be banned. Iranians are using Tor and VPN to bypass the virtual blocks. Or they can start their state service as government employees are allowed to have social media accounts. After Muslim Innocence video made in the U.S. and uploaded in the Internet Pakistan was banning YouTube from 2012 to 2016. The Pakistan government lifted the ban in January 2016 but reserved the right to block doubtful videos for public view. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and WhatsApp in Turkey have been subject to block multiple times since March 2014, the Turkish government suspecting the use of these resources by the opposition.

As you see from the above-mentioned examples (the ones listed are just the most striking), the decisions to block a website were based on the political ambitions. The usage of censorship on the Internet is a very sensitive and thorny issue. Time will show if the Moscow city court confines itself to LinkedIn blocking only. Limiting the users’ access to online resources is possible, though shutting it down completely would be a hard task for now. ​​​​​​​