How to combat Russian censorship from virtuality

Since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, the government Russian has taken various measures that limit freedom of expression and free flow of information. It has restricted access to Facebook, Twitter and Instagram in Russia; as well as some independent news sites that reported to the public. The argument of the government led by Vladimir Putin was always that they took steps to combat misinformation.

In fact, at the beginning of March the Russian parliament passed a law banning what it considers “fake” news about the armed forces with sentences of 15 years of prison. And this refers to any content that contradicts official propaganda, the use of the word “invasion” to mention what is happening in Ukraine could even be a source of conflict. The term they prefer is “special military operation”.

This measure led different journalistic organizations, local and international, to stop the reports they were making within the country. On the other hand, that nation's independent media have been shut down or banned.

However, different users have managed to challenge these restrictions thanks to the ability to viralize content offered by the internet. Such is the case of Marina Ovsyannikova, editor of Channel One, who broke into Russia's leading evening live news today - from the sign she works on - with a sign that read: “Stop the war. Don't believe in propaganda. They're lying to them.” And singing: “Stop the war! No war!” In a short time, that intervention went viral and made headlines all over the world.

Some media have launched Telegram channels, where they can continue to inform the Russian public, without restrictions or censorship. Some of these media outlets highlighted that they saw a significant increase in their audience on that communication channel.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as other officials from that country, have recorded and shared videos showing the harshness of the war. In fact, during his speech to the United States Congress this Wednesday, the president showed a heartbreaking video prepared by his Government, which showed graphic images of civilian casualties, including images of the bodies of children seriously injured while doctors tried to save their lives in hospital.

The video begins with joyful scenes from normal life in Ukraine just a few weeks ago, and juxtaposes images of life there now: buildings previously intact and now destroyed, the dead in mass graves, the blood spilled while treating the wounded, people crying from shock and pain, others desperately fleeing, farewell tears.

The content was immediately replicated on the web. Censorship, as can be seen, has failed to completely silence dissent. In fact, several media outlets and social networks such as Twitter or Facebook have begun to implement different measures to help Russians evade censorship by using Tor, an option to protect traffic connections and routes.

There has also been an increase in downloads of VPN applications that allow censorship to be circumvented. A VPN is a virtual private network and constitutes a network technology used to connect one or more computers to a private network using the internet. This technology replaces the IP provided by an internet provider, allowing it to be configured according to the settings desired by the user.

Even some computer programmers have come together and created a solution to combat censorship, the Washington Post analyzes in a recent article. This is the case of the Squadron 303 group (referring to the air squadron that crossed Nazi fighter planes during World War II) which developed a website that displays the email address, phone or WhatsApp number of a randomly selected Russian citizen, as well as a pre-written message that a visitor can send to engage in conversation from their own accounts.

Millions of messages with war photos and data on civilian deaths have been shared in recent weeks. In a short time, the group went from using one server at the beginning of the month to the 16 servers they currently have. And the idea is to continue scaling this structure.

The news site also shares another fact: a search engine, called Rusleaks, has been created, which aggregates more than a dozen databases that supposedly present personal information of Russian military personnel, including tens of thousands of names, addresses, telephone numbers and passport details of people.

The data has not been fully verified and the Ukrainian government has released some of the records, increasing the risks of false information. But one software developer, who is a member of the group, said the data could be used to alert the Russian public to what their government is doing. “We are fighting on too many borders now. And this is clearly one of them... Whatever it takes to make our voice louder,” he said, as quoted by the Washington Post.

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