The paranoia is starting to ramp up, now with drones and missiles hitting inside Russia.

My guess is they will crack down hard on anyone trying to talk about the actual reality of what's going on vs the party line.

A classic move by authoritarian tyrants, suppress the spread of information, outlaw the free exchange of ideas.

This is why Tor and other privacy preserving technology is so important. People's lives and wellbeing depend on them. We must not forget there are people in this world who are being harassed, tortured, and killed because they dare to question their government, dare to criticize their leaders, dare to think for themselves.

"While the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power." -V for Vendetta

Lmao Russia moment.

Afraid of a civilian uprising. Also RIP classic warez “.ru” pages like old-game.

I expect Western governments are looking at this and saying "gee, I wish we had that".

welp. they have to catch up with north korea eventually

Expect this to come to the EU in a few years.

Republicans would love the freedumb of living in Russia

That's gonna truly suck. VK has good videos unavailable elsewhere. I've had an account there for a long time. I wonder what that'll mean for access to rutracker. edit: whois says rutracker is registered in the Bahamas :)

Man, this makes me rethink my whole idea of online anonymity.

There's a lot of reasons why requiring identity verification could be a good thing, but holy shit now I realize how quickly something like that could slip into authoritarianism.

I still think we need a identity verification service for things like online games and social media (to thwart ban evasion), but it has to be something decentralized.

Piracy is allowed there anyway since the war the will not punish it, they even promote it with an emergent law

Basically what China has done.

I think this will lower hacker problems by half atleast lol

Are there identities of russian Babushkas for sale anywhere?

/s but not really

This will have a huge impact on free speech in Russia. Also, information we receive from Russia may not be genuine after this measurement will be implemented, as it will be politically in terms of Russia - as we know it from China right now. In order to spread the REAL things that are going on, people will need to risk their freedom.

Ban them from Twitter while you’re at it

Given how easy it is to set up a Docker-based wireguard server on a small remote VM, I suspect this will achieve very little.