Russia’s communications regulator, the Russian Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media, has blocked the instant messaging app Discord for violating Russian laws. The communications regulator made the decision after finding the app at fault for 5 violations under the law governing social networks.
According to the Russian communication regulator, Discord failed to prevent users from leveraging the app for terrorism and extremist use. The regulator also faulted the messaging app for allowing the unlawful posting of information, drug sales, and onboarding of Russian citizens to commit them.
The regulator insisted that since Discord falls under the social network category, it should have worked toward removing any unlawful content by itself. The watchdog fined the messaging app approximately $36,150 for the violations, in addition to the implemented restrictions.
Discord block comes 1 week after similar speculations
Russians are turning back the clock, not only with a morality lifted from the 9th century but seemingly on a path to be left with nothing but 9th-century technology as well.
Social media giant Discord may finally become unavailable in Russia. pic.twitter.com/2FKW35kJDL
— KyivPost (@KyivPost) October 8, 2024
Sources allegedly divulged that Russia’s communications regulator had been planning for the block since late September. A Telegram page confirmed that several users across different cities complained about the app not opening or not receiving messages over the past 24 hours. The downtime was notably not the first, as users allegedly complained about failure in the Discord app since August.
The Discord Downdetector service in the country revealed data concerning recent downtimes. The site revealed that the downtime spread out across 16 different cities, including Yakutia, Kamchatka Territory, Sakhalin, Primorsky Krai, and Khabarovsk Krai.
48% of respondents on the site mentioned that their mobile Discord app crashed. 24% said that the app experienced general failure. 22% cited site crashes, 2% chose account failure, and 1% chose app alerts. Others cited that the app had no connection, did not support logins, or did not load.
More news from the Telegram app revealed that the current app failure was the fourth recorded in the past 2 and a half months. The first report was from August 21, recording failures in Discord and other apps, including Telegram, WhatsApp, Steam, VKontakte, and more. Russian Discord users reported the other incidents on September 18 and 26.
