To circumvent censorship, Twitter just launched on Tor, a web browser allowing you to surf the web completely anonymously. In the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the reach of the social network has been restricted by the Russian government. Still, Twitter wants to continue making its service accessible to Russian users.
Twitter lands on Tor
On Friday March 4, the Russian Internet regulator, Roskomnadzor, decided to “restrict access” to Twitter after blocking Facebook. A decision based at the request of the National Prosecutor’s Office dated February 24, the day the invasion of Ukraine began. The war is played on the ground, but also in the media. In 2022, the majority of information is disseminated on the web and on social networks. Russia is aware of this and wage a veritable information war since the beginning of the conflict.
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To evade Russian surveillance, Twitter has decided to launch itself on Tor, the main gateway to the dark web. Browsing Tor allows users to hide their location and activity. A Twitter spokesperson said that in this context, it was essential to “to make our platform more accessible. We are aware of reports of increasing difficulty for users to access Twitter from Russia. We are investigating and working to restore full access to our service.”.
Russia is waging an information war
Social media restrictions are nothing new in Russia. For more than a year, the Russian regulator has already been slowing down the operation of Twitter. He accuses the American social network of “not to remove content deemed illegal by Putin’s government, including those related to the opposition”. To get started on the dark web, the Twitter teams were accompanied by Alec Muffett, an engineer specializing in Tor. He himself announced the arrival of Twitter on Tor and specifies that he had considered this possibility since 2014.
This is possibly the most important and long-awaited tweet that I’ve ever composed.
On behalf of @TwitterI am delighted to announce their new @TorProject onion service, at:https://t.co/Un8u0AEXeE pic.twitter.com/AgEV4ZZt3k
—Alec Muffett (@AlecMuffett) March 8, 2022
It was precisely during this same year that Facebook launched a version of its platform on Tor. Two years later, the social network already counted one million monthly connections. Many media are also present on this browser. This is the case of New York Timesof the BBCof The Verge or even of ProPublica. Often criticized for being used as a real internet crime marketplaceTor is now becoming a tool for circumventing censorship…