During the second quarter of 2024, Roskomnadzor sent 24 requests to Pikabu demanding that they remove information about bypassing blocking in Russia. This follows from the community report on transparency, to which Roskomsvoboda drew attention.
As stated in the report, the Pikabu administration was mainly approached by representatives of Roskomnadzor, once the author of the request was the Investigative Committee — then the security forces tried find out information about one of the community users.
The majority of Roskomnadzor's requests, 166 pieces, concerned the removal of prohibited information — in particular, related to incitement to hatred and extremism (64 requests), suicide (50 requests) and bypassing blocking (24 requests). All of them were satisfied by the Pikabu administration.
From previous reports it follows that Roskomnadzor began actively sending requests demanding the removal of instructions for bypassing blocking only in 2024. In the first quarter of this year, the department sent 12 such requests to Pikabu.
After the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Russian authorities began to block content on the Internet more often — restrictions included not only the websites of independent media disseminating information about the war, but also Internet resources associated with LGBTQ+ and “undesirable” organizations, as well as human rights and other projects.
In this regard, the demand for the use of VPN services has increased in Russia, and instructions for bypassing blocking have also become popular. After this, authorities began to fight both VPN services that refused to comply with blocking laws and instructions for circumventing restrictions.
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In the first four days of March this year alone, Roskomnadzor demanded that 34 website owners remove information that “advertises or popularizes means of bypassing blocking of access to illegal content.” In cases where site administrations refuse to remove prohibited information, they will be held administratively liable.
In addition, in July, applications from VPN services Proton, Nord, Red Shield and Le VPN were removed from the Russian AppStore at the request of Roskomnadzor. Shortly before this, the department got the Opera browser to remove from its online store an extension for bypassing Censor Tracker blocking.