Thu, Apr 8th 2021 4:32am — Karl Bode Over the last decade Russia has accelerated the government's quest to censor the internet. That was most conspicuous with the passage of a 2016 surveillance bill that not only mandated encryption backdoors, but effectively banned VPN providers from operating in the country unless they were willing to spy and censor at Putin's behest. Many VPN providers weren't keen on that, so they simply stopped doing business in the country. More recently, Russia has been engaged in a bit of a hissy fit over Twitter's unwillingness to censor things the Russian government doesn't like. And while Twitter has been trying to filter more illegal behavior and pornography at the government's behest, the company hasn't been censoring broader content at the rate Putin and pals prefer. So as punishment, Russia has taken to throttling user access to Twitter to a rather 1997-esque 128 kbps, or about the speed of an old IDSN line. Granted the ham-fisted gamesmanship Russia has been engaged in has already resulted in some notable collateral damage: