New glitch in Telegram. Throughout Friday, residents of Russian regions complained about problems with the messaging app, including messages not being sent. Foreign Telegram users also encountered problems. Most often, people complain that the web version of the service does not load, the application runs slowly, and the Telegram bot does not work correctly. Many people also encountered the fact that upon launch, Messenger cannot connect to its servers. Furthermore, for some people it works fine over the mobile network, but when connecting via Wi-Fi it starts having problems. The peak of complaints occurred at noon Moscow time.
There were disruptions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod and other large cities. The capital Kuban is no exception. Deputy General Director of Sales FM Krasnodar Anton Misulis said:
Anton Misulis Deputy General Director of Sales FM Krasnodar “Telegram works very unstable in Krasnodar and the level of instability changes from day to day. For example, yesterday the mobile application worked very poorly, notifications did not come, the phone hung up several times, I had to reboot. Well, there is not much to say about downloading and sending files. All this happened on crutches, with the help of additional applications. In general, Telegram does not work good in Krasnodar. With WhatsApp (owned by Meta, recognized as an extremist organization in Russia and banned – BFM), the situation is even worse.”
But in Kazan, Telegram was suddenly fixed, unlike WhatsApp. Elena Novgorodtseva, editor-in-chief of Business FM Kazan, continues:
Elena Novgorodtseva, editor-in-chief of Business FM Kazan “The fact is that for about two weeks Telegram worked very poorly, at least messages were sent, but videos and photos were difficult to load – this without a VPN, both on the desktop version and in the mobile application. And strangely enough, today for some reason Telegram worked like a charm: everything loaded and loaded very well, and in general, there were no problems. As for WhatsApp, I want to say that we often have problems here. In my opinion, no one has used WhatsApp for a long time. They use it over VPN, but in general, he has seizures: some messages periodically send, but in general he is dead.
The defeat did not just affect Russia; Users from Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK reported problems with the messenger. This means that the cause of failure is most likely not in Russia. Evgeniy Tsarev, director of RTM Group, expert in the field of information security and IT law, said:
Evgeniy Tsarev, director of RTM Group, expert in the field of information security and IT law “This shows, among other things, that the problem lies somewhere in data processing centers in Europe. Modern social networks, large projects, they rent server capacity in different places: separately in Asia, separately in Europe. Yes, and, apparently, some nodes located in Europe, they stopped working or started to malfunction somehow. Not sure if this is related to blocking just for the reason that users from other countries also complain and they complain.” about European suppliers and European suppliers is a clear indication that there are some problems on their territory.”
Previously, Roskomnadzor did not rule out completely blocking WhatsApp if the messenger did not comply with the requirements of Russian law. Nothing similar has been said about Telegram. And the other day, the head of the Duma's Information Policy Committee, Sergei Boyarsky, called blocking Telegram a “wrong step”, since this service is not only a messaging application, but also a social network. The Deputy Minister added: “Telegram has a large number of channels with a large audience that respond exactly to our agenda.
Valentin Petukhov, tech blogger at Wylsacom, talks about why some Russians will find it difficult to find a replacement for Telegram if the messaging app is no longer available:
Blogger Valentin Petukhov, founder of YouTube channel Wylsacom “Many people communicate with relatives abroad. Mach is currently limited to Russian SIM cards and therefore this form of interaction will be inconvenient for everyone. But again, it seems to me that now talking about blocking this or that service is perhaps not entirely correct. I will propose a new formula. It sounds like “limiting free access”. We all understand that, if you want, you can use WhatsApp and other services, for me this also leaves a certain mark. That is, people just feel upset when an already understandable service is taken away from them, but as a rule, they continue to use it, because it is difficult to change their habits, social circle, etc., and to explain to their grandmother, who lives somewhere in another country, that now, unfortunately, it will Cannot call via WhatsApp.
Friday's setback at Telegram was short-lived; By the afternoon, messenger activity had largely been restored, according to data from the Sboi.rf service.
