The Internet will work. Even after three letters

Write it down on birch bark and pass it on to your descendants: well, you can’t ban means of bypassing blocking

The Ministry of Digital Development is the main anti-hero of the last week in the field of Internet regulation: in terms of the number of daily initiatives received, the department snatches the palm from Roskomnadzor.

The main reason is a big battle with means of bypassing blocking (we will call them ***).

The main reason is the supposedly secret order of the president, but this is not certain: no one has seen documents on this topic.

The main question is: what next?

Today we have a strange situation. The authorities, at least in the person of one structure, found themselves at a dead end.

On the one hand, the carpet shutdowns of mobile Internet in the capital caused, to put it mildly, massive irritation of citizens. Now this is the last thing the political bloc needs. Business is on roughly the same side, but discontent there is aggravated by financial losses. And so life is not easy, and here they are also deprived of the last thing. Bad.

On the other hand, there is a power bloc that doesn’t care for these niceties. Those who make decisions still use rotary phones with special communications and are not very aware of the real problems. There is a course towards sovereignization - we are moving forward without stopping. But the world around us is infuriating: even the blind will not see the growth in demand for *** - both private and corporate.

Even in the current conditions, the successful installation of certain means of bypassing blocking in one click nullifies all the efforts of the relevant authorities. And he also fills other people’s pockets.

The state has created an entire market from scratch, which in normal times is of interest only to specialists and enthusiasts.

And in the middle, between these parties, we have a big problem.

There is no elegant solution to this issue in nature. The latest funny collision: I remember someone threatened to block Telegram in early April, and the FAS ran ahead of the locomotive, threatening fines for placing ads in an unreliable messenger. But then, as always, it suddenly became clear that a bunch of not only commercial, but also quite state-owned companies had paid a lot of money for various placements. I had to roll back and put everything off until the end of the year, when the budgets were finally spent.

Not everything is so smooth with “white lists” either. In theory, of course, it sounds nice: here’s Sberbank, Gosuslugi and VK, and then watch and don’t screw around. And just like in theory, it even starts to work somewhere. But practice, read real life, turned out to be much more difficult. The example of non-functioning city toilets, which also depend on the Internet, has already become a textbook example - simply because it’s funny. And there definitely turned out to be a ton of unfunny, but equally necessary, things that only increase the number of dissatisfied people.

The operators were the first to be targeted. Among the initiatives from below, the most original was the idea of ​​simply limiting foreign traffic. Here's a few gigabytes, and everything higher is for a separate price according to the price list. But here too the scenario is the same. Even this is difficult. Billing, routing, many questions on cross-border traffic from friendly countries, including the Republic of Belarus. Everything is working there for now. Alexander Grigorievich threatens, but has not yet taken any concrete actions.

Given the complexity of implementing the plan, alternative ideas are also being voiced. VimpelCom CEO Sergei Anokhin proposed segregation: dividing users into good and bad. Like prove that you are not a drone and are not violating anything, and everything will be fine with you. Apparently, you will have to prove it in a separate office at the MFC, after a long conversation on the topic “Why do you need the Internet and prove that you are not a camel.” However, this is still a long way off.

Larger sites are also expected to join the fray. Wildberries, Yandex, Ozone and other sympathizers will restrict those who access the site via ***. There are two meanings implied. The first is to once again inform all lovers of digital freedom what bad people they are. The second is to make the lives of ordinary citizens even more inconvenient. Turn it on here, turn it off here. It works here, but not so much here. A reason to think: is the Internet worth the constant effort? Maybe it's better than him? And it’s not bad in cheburnet.

The option of “stupidly punishing” is apparently being seriously considered, but for now, fortunately, is being postponed. Even the Ministry of Internal Affairs spoke out, just in case: “There are no plans yet to search citizens’ phones in order to detect *** there.”

Consider it calmed down. But who knows what will happen when all other methods show their failure. So this information is correct only at the time of writing. There is no need to relax: someone will have to be punished in any case. For now - still the same unfortunate operators. The latter, receiving thousands of complaints from customers, are trying to return people to normal Internet by one means or another, including bypassing black boxes and changing routing. Disorder. Get a fine.

And in general, the life of a provider is becoming difficult. Considering the scale of the country and the still large number of companies providing telematic services, the Ministry of Digital Development will complicate the licensing of activities, which logically threatens the consolidation of the market, the growth of dominance of monopolies and, of course, rising prices. So, not only are citizens offered scanty and limited Internet, but they also cost a lot of money. In the end, who, if not the end user, will pay for this banquet. The state budget is shrinking, businesses need to survive. Please pay.

And if you think that everything ends with this brief overview of events, save your energy. This is just the beginning. The order must be carried out, which means there will be many more options on how to close the Internet and cross the field without breaking almost everything. But this, fortunately for some and unfortunately for many, is unlikely. As mentioned above, the situation is deadlock.

The Internet is a network, in more than the truest sense of the word. This means that if you pull one thread, another will get tangled, then a third, and so on. And after the toilets, business problems and citizen dissatisfaction, a million more side effects will emerge, which, most likely, will no longer be so funny.

Purely formally, there are still many options, but it just so happens that none of them will lead to the desired result. Write it down on birch bark and pass it on to your descendants: well, you can’t ban ***. This did not work out either in China or Iran. The example of North Korea is not relevant - they don’t provide normal internet even on holidays. And the main thing is that some part of the power vertical is still worried: it won’t get any better.

The sovereign Internet does not fit in with either economic growth or traditional values, according to which, as old-timers remember, Russia has had a great IT industry since ancient times. That is, now it already was.

Not even for the sake of aggravating the discourse, but to state a fact, it is worth recording: the state, with its ill-conceived decisions, begins to destroy not only citizens, but also itself - after all, what could be worse than administrative disgrace, when decisions and orders cannot be carried out. And the promise to block everything is not like building a kindergarten for you. This may not be forgiven.

Separately, it is worth noting that now people are spending money on means of bypassing blocking, they are starting to pay more for the Internet that does not work very well, somehow they get out of it and at the same time learn financial literacy. And at some point it may turn out that breaking up with this state is cheaper and more effective. So we'll live.