While it’s great that Russia is getting hit with digital sanctions, it does highlight how much we depend on majoritarily American GMAX (Google, Meta, Amazon and X) for communications and information.
The internet shouldn’t be like this. That’s how you end up with limited access to important services and price gouging where net neutrality laws don’t exist.
This is just Russian internet infrastructure collapsing. Nothing to do with sanctions. Although digital sanctions have hit Russia, for the most part using a VPN works fine.
I would guess the manpower drain of their costly Ukraine war has a larger effect than the sanctions. They are simply running out of people to work on stuff, throughout the country.
It’s more than that. Russia is in terminal decline. The last batch of properly educated engineers graduated from Soviet schools in the late 80s. They are now retiring which leaves a huge skills gap. In the past Russia used Western expertise todo the work of building and maintaining oil fields etc. but that is cut off now. Chinese engineers can fill some of the gaps but they don’t have expertise in oil fields and certain types of engineering to replace Western expertise.
The war in Ukraine has only accelerated this process.
MTC is the largest Russian mobile carrier. T-Bank is a Russian bank. Telegram is mostly Russian as well, certainly not terribly Western. TikTok is Chinese. If this is blocking, then it is from the Russian side and not due to sanctions.
While it’s great that Russia is getting hit with digital sanctions, it does highlight how much we depend on majoritarily American GMAX (Google, Meta, Amazon and X) for communications and information.
The internet shouldn’t be like this. That’s how you end up with limited access to important services and price gouging where net neutrality laws don’t exist.
I feel really fortunate to have the fediverse.
This is just Russian internet infrastructure collapsing. Nothing to do with sanctions. Although digital sanctions have hit Russia, for the most part using a VPN works fine.
You don’t think those might be related???
Huawei still sells networking hardware to Russia. So that is not a problem.
Also T-Bank is Russian, as is Telegram at least somewhat. TikTok is Chinese and they do not sanction Russia.
I would guess the manpower drain of their costly Ukraine war has a larger effect than the sanctions. They are simply running out of people to work on stuff, throughout the country.
It’s more than that. Russia is in terminal decline. The last batch of properly educated engineers graduated from Soviet schools in the late 80s. They are now retiring which leaves a huge skills gap. In the past Russia used Western expertise todo the work of building and maintaining oil fields etc. but that is cut off now. Chinese engineers can fill some of the gaps but they don’t have expertise in oil fields and certain types of engineering to replace Western expertise.
The war in Ukraine has only accelerated this process.
Yeah it sounds to me more like important services are being blocked.
MTC is the largest Russian mobile carrier. T-Bank is a Russian bank. Telegram is mostly Russian as well, certainly not terribly Western. TikTok is Chinese. If this is blocking, then it is from the Russian side and not due to sanctions.
Good point.