On March 10th, Twitter users in Russia suddenly experienced a sharp slowdown in services.

Russian authorities want Twitter to delete more than 3,000 “illegal” posts, which human rights groups believe are to suppress dissent.

When Twitter does not comply, the government is ready. It has deployed a new technology, so it can do the job on its own.

Authors: Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur

Russia's boldest Internet censorship initiative began in the most mundane way-a series of bureaucratic emails and forms.

These messages were sent by Russia’s powerful Internet regulators, requesting technical details—such as traffic, equipment specifications, and connection speeds—from companies that provide Internet and telecommunications services across the country. Then the black box arrived.

Since government-approved technicians install equipment next to their own computer systems and servers, telecommunications companies have no choice but to give in. Sometimes locked behind a lock and key, the new device connects back to a command center in Moscow, giving the authorities amazing new powers to block, filter, and slow down websites they don’t want the Russian public to see.

This process has been ongoing since 2019, and it represents the beginning of perhaps the most ambitious digital censorship in the world outside of China. Under the leadership of President Vladimir V. Putin, who once referred to the Internet as a "CIA project" and regarded the Internet as a threat to his power, the Russian government is trying to trap the country’s once open and arbitrary Internet into Dilemma.

A senior Russian congressman revealed this year that the device has been placed in the computer rooms of Russia's largest telecommunications and Internet service providers, including Rostelecom, MTS, MegaFon and Vympelcom. According to researchers and activists, it affects the vast majority of the country's more than 120 million wireless and home Internet users.

This spring, when Twitter became slow in the country, the world saw for the first time the new tools Russia is using. Researchers and activists say this is the first time the filtration system has been put into use. Since then, other websites have also been blocked, including several related to the imprisoned opposition leader Alexei A. Navalny (Alexei A. Navalny).

"This is something the world can imitate," said Laura Cunningham, the former head of the State Department's Internet Freedom Program. "Russia's censorship model can be quickly and easily copied by other authoritarian governments."

The image on the left loads in about 4 seconds, which is about how long it takes under normal conditions. The same picture on the right takes eight times as much time to load, about 34 seconds, simulating the experience of a Russian Twitter user when using government technology.

Note: For the 523 KB image file hosted by Twitter, the researchers determined that the amount of downloadable data is reduced by more than 87% compared to images hosted elsewhere, which is very similar to a 2G connection. The exact speed depends on the provider and the time of day. This is an approximation based on data collected by researchers from Censored Planet, a research group at the University of Michigan.

Russia's censorship technology is somewhere between companies that provide Internet access and people who browse the web via mobile phones or laptops. In a process often compared to intercepting mailed letters, the software-known as "deep packet inspection"-filters data transmitted over the Internet network, slowing down websites or deleting any content that is programmed to block.

Disruption has the potential to overturn Russia's booming digital life. Although the political system firmly grasps Putin’s cult of personality, and television broadcasts and newspapers face strict restrictions, the online culture is full of activism, black humor, and foreign content. Extensive censorship of the Internet may plunge the country into a deeper level of isolation, similar to the Cold War era.

"I was born in a super free Internet era, and now I see it is breaking down," said Ksenia Ermoshina, a Russian researcher now working at the French National Center for Scientific Research. She published a paper on review techniques in April.

Seventeen Russian telecommunications experts, activists, researchers, and academics who knew the work described the censorship infrastructure, many of whom declined to be named because they feared retaliation. The government documents reviewed by the New York Times also outline some technical details and requirements for telecommunications and Internet service providers.

In addition to other tough methods and legal intimidation, Russia also uses censorship techniques to gain more influence on Western Internet companies. In September, after the government threatened to arrest local employees of Google and Apple, these companies removed applications run by Navalny’s supporters before the national election.

Roskomnadzor, the national Internet regulator responsible for overseeing this work, can now go further. It threatened that if YouTube, Facebook and Instagram did not block certain content on their own, they would be taken down. After the authorities slowed down Twitter this year, the company agreed to delete dozens of posts deemed illegal by the government.

Russia's censorship efforts encountered little resistance. In the United States and Europe, who were once full supporters of the open Internet, leaders remained largely silent amid growing distrust of Silicon Valley and trying to self-regulate the most serious Internet abuses. Russian authorities have pointed out that Western technology industry regulation justifies their own repression.

"Surprisingly, this did not attract the attention of the Biden administration," said Michael McFall, the US ambassador to Russia in the Obama administration. He criticized Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter for not being stronger against Russia’s policies.

A White House spokesperson said that the government has discussed the issue of online freedom of speech with the Russian government and called on the Kremlin to "stop pressure on censorship critics."

Roskomnadzor did not mention its filtering technology in a statement, but said that foreign social networks continue to ignore Russian Internet law, which prohibits incitement and content involving "secession" topics, such as drug abuse and extremist organizations.

“Russia’s legislation in the media and information field does not allow censorship,” it said, adding that the law “clearly defines the types of content that are harmful and threatening to citizens”.

Google and Twitter, which own YouTube, declined to comment. Apple did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, Facebook did not specifically target Russia, but said it was "committed to respecting the human rights of all people who use our products."

Rostelecom, one of Russia's largest Internet service providers, submits questions to Roskomnadzor. MegaFon declined to comment. MTS and Vympelcom did not respond to requests for comment.

Many people question whether Russia has the technical expertise or political will to cut off its citizens’ main sources of online entertainment, information, and work. In 2018, before new censorship techniques were put in place, due to technical issues and public outrage, the authorities abandoned their efforts to shut down the popular messaging service Telegram. Many people see YouTube as a future goal because it is used by independent media and critics of the Kremlin, which may arouse backlash.

However, Internet access is increasingly used as a tool of political power. In recent years, governments in India, Myanmar, Ethiopia, and elsewhere have used Internet interruptions to stifle a few dissidents. Russia shut down the internet during anti-government protests in the southern region of Ingushetia in 2018 and Moscow in 2019.

The troubled tech giant. An internal document leaked by a former Facebook employee gave people a closer look at the operation of this secret social media company and once again called for better supervision of the company’s wide-ranging impact on its users’ lives.

How it started. In September, the Wall Street Journal published a Facebook document, a series of reports based on leaked documents. The evidence disclosed in this series shows that Facebook used the company name Meta on October 28 to understand that one of its products is worsening the body image problem of teenagers.

informer. In the "60 Minutes" interview aired on October 3, Facebook product manager Frances Haugen, who left the company in May, revealed that she was responsible for the leakage of these internal documents.

Ms. Hogan’s testimony in Congress. On October 5, Ms. Haogen testified before the Senate Subcommittee, saying that Facebook was willing to use hateful and harmful content on its website to attract users back. Facebook executives, including Mark Zuckerberg, called her accusations false.

Facebook papers. Ms. Haugen also filed a complaint with the US Securities and Exchange Commission and provided the edited document to Congress. A congressional worker then provided these files (called Facebook files) to multiple news organizations, including the New York Times.

New revelation. The files in the Facebook file show how well Facebook understands the extremist groups on its website that try to divide American voters before the election. They also revealed that internal researchers have repeatedly determined how key Facebook functions amplify toxic content on the platform.

China provides inspiration. Over the years, Russian politicians have held talks with Chinese officials about building their own firewall, and even met with designers of filters that block foreign websites. In 2019, during the World Internet Conference in China, Roskomnadzor signed an agreement with its Chinese simulation, promising to strengthen government control of the Internet.

But unlike China, which has three state-owned telecommunications companies that let people go online, Russia has thousands of Internet providers, which makes censorship more difficult. This is where the black box comes in. It provides government officials with a scalpel instead of a sledgehammer to filter specific websites and services without cutting off all access rights.

Russia's censorship system has a long history. For decades, international telephone lines have been restricted, and radio jammers have hindered foreign broadcasts. The state still strictly controls television.

The Internet is different. By allowing democratic groups inside and outside Russia to coordinate and exchange information, it played a role in bringing Boris Yeltsin to power in 1991. In the following years, fiber optic cables were laid to connect this country to the global Internet.

Mr. Putin tried to put the elf back into the bottle. The surveillance system monitors people's online activities, and some bloggers have been arrested. In 2012, the country passed a law requiring Internet service providers to block thousands of banned websites, but it is difficult to enforce, and many websites are still available.

Therefore, in May 2019, Mr. Putin signed a new phase: a "Sovereign Internet" law that compels Internet providers to install "technical means to counter threats"-equipment with software for the government to track, Filtering and rerouting Internet traffic without any involvement or knowledge of the company.

The law creates a registry of key exchange points for cross-border Internet cables entering the country and Russian Internet network connections. Experts say this map makes it easier for the authorities to shut down parts of the network.

Since then, hundreds of companies have received orders from Roskomnadzor. According to a document shared with the New York Times, regulators require information about the company’s computer systems and what settings must be used to allow government agencies, the Public Communications Network Monitoring and Management Center, to remotely access their networks.

Mikhail Klimarev, an industry analyst who worked with Russian Internet companies such as Rostelecom, said that then government-approved contractors installed filtering equipment that allowed regulators to block, slow, or redirect traffic.

"Every Russian Internet provider has a blocking system installed at the border," he said.

A Russian official involved in the plan said on Wednesday that the technology is currently in use at 500 telecom operator locations, covering 100% of mobile Internet traffic and 73% of broadband traffic. The official said that by next year, the technology will be used in more than 1,000 locations.

According to researchers from the University of Michigan and Russian telecommunications experts, the filtering technology is manufactured by companies including RDP.ru, a Russian telecommunications technology provider with government ties. On the RDP website, it boasted of providing "high-performance URL filtering for prohibited sites", allowing operators to comply with Russian law. The company sells products in Belarus and Kazakhstan, where human rights organizations have documented Internet censorship.

RDP.ru did not respond to a request for comment.

Attacking Twitter, which is not widely popular in Russia, is a "critical moment," said Andrei Soldatov, the co-author of the book "Red Network", which is a book on the Russian Internet. Researchers at the University of Michigan measured that connection speeds have dropped by about 87%, only slightly better than cellular networks in the early 2000s.

"It shows that they have this ability and can use it," Mr Soldatov said.

Oleg Matsnev reported. Additional production by Gray Beltran.