Cloudflare Says Shutting Down In Russia Would Give Putin What He Wants

We've already noted how several of the business decisions to shut down integral parts of the Internet to punish Putin" aren't really punishing Putin, but the Russian public.

For example Cogent's decision to sever Russia from the rest of the Internet is something that Putin generally wants given his longstanding desire to forge a sort of Russian splinternet," allowing him to more freely propagandize the Russian public and cut them off from independent news sources. Experts of various stripes spent much of last week making this very point:

I am very afraid of this," said Mikhail Klimarev, executive director of the Internet Protection Society, which advocates for digital freedoms in Russia. I would like to convey to people all over the world that if you turn off the Internet in Russia, then this means cutting off 140 million people from at least some truthful information. As long as the Internet exists, people can find out the truth. There will be no Internet - all people in Russia will only listen to propaganda."

Russia's general bullshit propaganda line on the Russian invasion - which is that Ukraine has somehow become overrun with Nazis," and Russia is only intervening in a moral special operation," is effectively all Russians hear on Russian media. The propaganda has heavily featured the use of the letter Z" to help delude Russians into thinking authoritarian oppression is akin to patriotic altruism.

Elsewhere, Cloudflare has announced that the company will not be heeding calls to shut down in Russia, quite correctly noting that it's something that would bolster Putin's desire to further isolate the heavily propagandized Russian populace from alternative viewpoints and helpful technologies:

Indiscriminately terminating service would do little to harm the Russian government but would both limit access to information outside the country and make significantly more vulnerable those who have used us to shield themselves as they have criticized the government.

In fact, we believe the Russian government would celebrate us shutting down Cloudflare's services in Russia. We absolutely appreciate the spirit of many Ukrainians making requests across the tech sector for companies to terminate services in Russia. However, when what Cloudflare is fundamentally providing is a more open, private, and secure Internet, we believe that shutting down Cloudflare's services entirely in Russia would be a mistake.

Ukraine Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov had previously asked Cloudflare to shut off service in Russia, stating that Cloudflare should not protect Russian web resources while their tanks and missiles attack our kindergartens." Fedorov also urged ICANN to revoke top-level Russian domains.

Of course it's not like unfettered access to the entirety of the Internet provides some cure for propaganda (see: huge segments of the American public). But cutting off the Russian public from technology and information that might enlighten, inform, or aid activism isn't the solution many seem to think it is.