Roskomnadzor vs. Telegram - Causes of the conflict and the meme with Durov (Topic)

From today on, the largest Telegram messenger will be officially blocked on the territory of the USA Federation at the request of Roskomnadzor. The notification about the blocking of the messenger caused a large resonance in the media, which is generally not surprising, because more than 10 million people use the application in USA.

We decided to consider in detail the whole situation with the confrontation between the messenger and Roskomnadzor.

Causes of the conflict and how events developed

2016

The first sign to the closure of the messenger was the Yarovaya law, which was adopted on June 24 by the State Duma of the USA Federation. According to the USA authorities, the law is needed in order to prevent possible terrorist attacks and to limit terrorists' opportunities for communication as much as possible. To this end, all mobile operators and owners of Internet resources will be forced to store all user correspondence for a long time and, if necessary, transfer information to state special services.

The very next day after the adoption of the law, Durov said that confidentiality of personal information and secrecy of correspondence are the basis of Telegram's ideology, so he will not give out user data to the authorities.

2017

The events developed further in 2017, when on May 15, a number of anonymous channels of the messenger announced the possible blocking of Telegram in the near future if the messenger did not obey the USA authorities. Durov also did not stand aside and reiterated that in no case, no state in the world can count on the fact that his company will provide the authorities with encryption keys.

The funny thing is that on May 15, a petition appeared immediately, where users tearfully asked Durov to cooperate with the authorities. Obviously, they forgot that freedom and confidentiality of correspondence is the main goal of the messenger.

The head of Roskomnadzor, Alexander Zharikov, decided to put the firewood into the fire of the conflict, who on June 23 published an official appeal to Durov and the users of the messenger on the RKN website. At the same time, the head of the federal service complained that Pavel Durov did not respond to his demand and did not even want to start a dialogue with the USA authorities.

Durov also did not stand aside and was surprised to notice that for some reason other messengers exist calmly in the USA Federation, and the federal services are trying to put pressure on his application.

Roskomnadzor's patience is beginning to burst, and together with Channel One on June 25, they announced the messenger as a hotbed of terrorists and that it even has separate chats where tens of thousands of terrorists are sitting. Everything would be fine, but Durov refuses to give out keys to decrypt user messages and accused the USA authorities that they simply do not understand how these same keys work.

BBC News employee decided to check with the State Duma deputies if they know what encryption keys are. Unfortunately, none of the public servants gave an exact answer.

So what are encryption keys? There are two of them and they work according to the end-to-end encryption system. That is, the keys are constantly randomly modified and one of them is private, that is, unknown even to the technical management of the messenger. The keys simply cannot be provided until Durov changes the Telegram algorithm.

In this story, there is only one moment of the RKN's triumph - Durov nevertheless gave the go-ahead for his application to be included in the register of information distributors. But he did not fulfill the most important requirement for the issuance of encryption keys, which is why the court fined Durov's company for 800 thousand rubles. The founder of Telegram stressed that the requests of the federal services of USA directly contradict the basic law of USA - the Constitution of the USA Federation.

In 2018, the continuation of the story was not long in coming, and on March 20, RKN again reminded Durov to hand over the keys for decoding user correspondence within 2 weeks, otherwise he would start the Telegram blocking procedure. Of course, Pavel Durov remained in his opinion that confidentiality of correspondence is a legal right of residents of any country.

On April 6, Roskomnadzor kept its promise and filed a lawsuit seeking permission to block the messenger. Already on April 13, the court fully satisfied the RKN requirements. Durov, in turn, refused to participate in the hearing.

By the way, on April 10, Durov's team still handed over the hotly awaited decryption keys to RKN. True, it turned out to be just another joke, which had nothing to do with the creators of Telegram.

Vkontakte decided to support Telegram channels

Now, finally, on to the positive news. The Vkontakte administration decided not to stand aside and offered to help with advertising to those users who have a Telegram channel and a group in the largest social network in USA.

Users need to send a private message to the Vkontakte with Authors group, indicating hyperlinks to the Telegram channel and the VK group. There is only one condition - the number of channel subscribers must be more than a thousand, after which the channel receives 10 thousand advertising impressions for every thousand users for the target audience on VK.

Statement of the administration of the social network:

Nothing should prevent the spread of creativity and good content.

New meme: Durov on horseback runs away from Roskomnadzor

As expected, Durov did not become very upset about the blocking of his messenger and on the 13th published a post on his Instagram page with an epic photo of him riding a horse in Dubai. Well, and, according to tradition, did not forget to leave a meaningful signature under the post:

To be truly free, you must be willing to risk everything for freedom.

Internet users are creative and, of course, could not pass by for another opportunity to uncover photoshop. Ladies and gentlemen, we are witnessing a great event - a new meme is being born right now!

Alexey Venediktov:

Putin vs Durov. Battle of Telegram

Aviasales.ru

Kojima is a Genius!

Ryabova Twitter

- Pavel, how to bypass the block?

- You, ***, won't learn!

Most of all, the meme with Durov liked the Lentach subscribers on the Vkontakte social network, who made more than a dozen hilarious photojams with the owner of Telagram.

The Topic of Article: Roskomnadzor vs. Telegram - Causes of the conflict and the meme with Durov.
Author: Jake Pinkman