RSF calls tech leaders to prevent possible informational shutdown in Russia

Reporters Without Borders (RSF), together with Russian independent media organisations and journalists, are calling on tech leaders, in an open letter, to join their efforts to safeguard Russia’s digital space and prevent a possible online informational shutdown.

In their open letter, RSF and Russia’s independent media noted that independent media had been targeted with harsh sentences and journalists had been forced into exile. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, major platforms in Russia have been blocked, leaving Telegram and YouTube as the sole outlets for Russian journalists to inform citizens.

RSF and Russia’s independent media’s strong suspicion that YouTube and Telegram may be blocked, they called for major services to come together to prevent this action. It is proposed that major services allow domain fronting within cloud solutions to bypass censorship and promote access to blocked websites in Russia through the Tor browser.