The Russian telecommunications sector regulator, Roskomnadzor published a message on a Russian social network,Vkontakte, warning that Reddit might be soon banned. The reason for banning is “an article about growing narcotic plants” which was published on Reddit.

Roskomnadzor is the agency responsible for censorship measures implementation. The current law in Russia allows Roskomnadzor to put websites with restricted content on a special list, which is then sent to Internet providers with the requirement to block the access to those pages.

The message which appeared on Roskomnadzor's page on Vkontakte states that the regulator has sent several messages with warnings to several Reddit's contact addresses but no reaction followed. In the messages Roskomnadzor demanded the page with the article about growing narcotic plants to be deleted. According to Roskomnadzor's announcement, their previous emails to Reddit had been answered.

“We admit that during the August vacation time, someone could relax too much, but this is not an excuse to risk the site's readership,” the announcement reads.

Roskomnadzor asks their followers on Vkontakte who are in contact with the Reddit administration to ask Reddit admins to check their Inboxes for the email from Roskomnadzor. If the administration does not react, Internet providers may be instructed to block the whole website since it is not possible to block individual Reddit pages due to the website technical characteristics.

Last month CoinFox reported that Roskomnadzor added “Zuckerberg will call”, one of the leading websites in the Russian media covering news on IT business and start-ups, to the list of domains banned in the country for publishing an article on bitcoin “What are bitcoins, and who needs them?”. The article was blacklisted by the Astrakhan regional court for “propaganda of crimes related to the legalisation of money or other property received through crime (money laundering) and propaganda of illicit transactions”. Later, Roskomnadzor, removed “Zuckerberg calls” site from the blacklist after one paragraph was deleted from the bitcoin related article.

Earlier, Roskomnadzor added 29 pages of the Onion.to domain to the list of websites banned in Russia, citing selling drugs for bitcoins via Tor network. In May, the Roskomnadzor's ban was lifted from several bitcoin websites following a court decision. The access to the websites was restricted by Roskomnadzor in January 2015 after the decision of a lower legal authority. However, after the hearing in the regional court the websites were allowed back online.

Aliona Chapel