Russia Blocks Reddit Over Post About Magic Mushrooms – Update
Russia has blocked Reddit. The official reason for this is that Reddit hosts information that can help home users produce magic mushrooms. Because the site uses https, it is not possible to block specific subreddits, which means that the entire site has to believe it.
The reason for the blockage was a post by Reddit user rsocfan on the Russian rudrugs subreddit. In the post, he explains how people can grow the Psilocybe mushrooms indoors. The mushrooms can make people hallucinate. Rsocfan posts that Russian communications watchdog Roskomnadzor contacted him in 2013 to inform him that the post is illegal in Russia and has been blocked, but because Reddit uses https, a specific subpage cannot be blocked. Because of the encryption, it is impossible to check when someone lands on a specific page, so Russia has decided to ban the entire site.
On August 10, the organization posted another appeal to VK because they were having trouble contacting Reddit’s admins. At the time, Roskomnadzor assumed that this was due to the holiday period. Now the organization has blocked the entire site, it said on social networking site VKontakte and Twitter. Providers must put the blockage into practice.
The block is not yet complete. For example, some users report that the entire website is now blocked, and others that they can only open rsocfan’s post. It is still unclear to what extent Reddit will be blocked in Russia and what the response of the website’s administrators will be.
Although the official reason is information about drugs, it regularly happens that Roskomnadzor threatens with blockades. In May, the government agency threatened to block Google, Facebook and Twitter. This summer, the Russian government also denied access to the Wayback Machine.
Update, 21:28: Reddit has meanwhile shielded the post in question from Russian users, and the Russian blockade has been lifted. That reports Russian news site Meduza.
Страница сайта Reddit отправлена на блокировку операторам связи http://t.co/UOVRA82L9d pic.twitter.com/7bpRAtzglS
— Роскомнадзор (@roscomnadzor) August 12, 2015