On August 12, Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service banned the entertainment and social networking site Reddit, after discovering a two-year-old discussion on one of its 9,000 active forums about how to cultivate hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Last year, a Russian law was passed pursuant to which internet users with high-traffic public web pages must register with the Russian media watchdog, Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Telecom, Information Technologies and Mass Communications (Roskomnadzor). If such website owners do not register voluntarily, Roskomnadzor orders them to join the list.
On August 10, Roskomnadzor reportedly attempted to contact Reddit about the chat thread, but was ignored, and so ultimately enacted the block. The agency then posted a message concerning the details of the block to its page on Russia’s VKontacte social network. The message explained that Roskomnadzor had sent information about the ban to several addresses at Reddit. After receiving no response, it assumed that the site was understaffed in August as people were on holiday. Despite blocking Reddit, the agency maintained that the popular site shouldn’t ultimately “risk losing its [entire Russian audience]”, and asked that anyone connected to Reddit’s site administrators inform them of the block.
The watchdog designed this wanted poster featuring Reddit’s alien mascot.
On August 13, Roskomnxdzor removed Reddit from their registry of illegal online materials as they finally received full compliance from the site. Users in Russia are no longer able to access the illegal content. Roskomnadzor today thanked internet users via VKontakte for prompting a response from Reddit’s administrators. The agency also said that they hope Reddit admin will respond more swiftly to their requests in the future.
Russia has banned and threatened many online organizations lately. Indeed, Reddit is just the latest addition to the list that includes Google, Facebook and Twitter, all of which have received warnings about complying with Russia’s laws on data transfer.
