Unexpected: Internet Censorship Has Made Some People Rich!
Reported on May 12 by "First Russian."
Russia's blocking of mobile internet and foreign instant messaging apps has triggered a massive reallocation of markets and advertising budgets, benefiting certain individuals and companies.
Moreover, these beneficiaries are not closely tied to the state but have intricate connections with certain officials.
As a result, billions of rubles have been poured into traffic monitoring and filtering systems, while the main profits have ended up in private holding companies' pockets.
Russia will invest nearly one trillion (!) rubles in information technology and communications development before 2028.
In addition, the Ministry of Digital Development’s own “departmental spending” exceeds 300 billion rubles annually, making it one of the most expensive ministries.
The scale of private funding is even larger—just the annual ad market for the Russian version of Telegram has reached $10 billion, attracting numerous contenders eager to capture this revenue.
Among the primary beneficiaries of the current wave of bans and intensified controls are “Big Tech” and major technology holding companies.
With foreign platforms like Telegram and YouTube blocked within Russia, their user base is growing, along with advertising budgets. In other words, traffic previously directed toward blocked resources is now being absorbed by domestic social networks such as VKontakte and Odnoklassniki.
This situation also benefits telecom giants and operators (MTS, "Megafon," "Beeline," "Tele2").
Although they need to invest in equipment, this also creates opportunities to monetize internal traffic and promote their own online cinemas and music services.
Furthermore, after restrictions on instant messaging apps were imposed, call volume actually increased sixfold!
It remains unclear whether these individuals are connected to the Ministry of Digital Development, but the logic of the situation certainly points in that direction.
After all, it is precisely the operators of third-party Telegram clients (forks) who gain access to user information.
According to Kazan businessman Fanius Sadikov and Alexander Smirnov, they reinvested funds from selling their interactive video service Movika shares into VK company!
We don’t want to assume the worst, but in this specific context, a high-ranking official who inadvertently leaked information to an unverified fork version may well have to pay more to convince well-meaning IT professionals to forget his mistake.
Original source: toutiao.com/article/1864938250360832/
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone.