The very popular crypto news website, CoinTelegraph, has been banned in Russia as the authorities added the domain in the record of blacklisted sites.
CoinTelegraph had been included in the list of blocked sites for the past two years. It was just yesterday when the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, imposed an extreme level of regulation on the network. The Russian federal service, also known as Roskomnadzor, happens to take issue with many things. The developer of the trending Russian anti-censorship browser informed that the URL was added to Roskmonadzor’s blacklist file mailed to ISPs yesterday, and it is an XML file privately distributed among ISPs to enable blocking.
Johann Bihr, the head of Eastern Europe and Central Asia Desk at Reporters Without Border, got in contact with CoinTelegraph to explain the prohibition of the site. Bihr stated, “The blocking of your website is one more sign that Russia’sRussia’s online censorship system is becoming more powerful.”
Roskomnadzor also carried out moves against the messaging service Telegram and blocked more than 20 million IP addresses in the Russian Federation. The focal aim was to eliminate the use of the application. However, the efforts failed to bring the anticipated results. Bihr also commented regarding Telegram and said that since the failure of Russia in blocking Telegram last year, the authorities had been actively working to improve their online censorship system.
“A major turning point was the ”Sovereign Internet’Internet’ law signed by President Putin on 1 May, which is taking Russia much closer to the Chinese model. This law will be implemented gradually from 1 November onwards, and Roskomnadzor has been installing and testing these new tools in the past few months,” he added.
