They want to close VKontakte in 2021: will the social network change in the future?

07:00, 02.03.2017 47

German Klimenko laughed at the ridiculous spam attack on users of a popular Russian social network

Photo: vector-v.ru

March 6, 2021 could have been a day of sorrow for users of the popular Russian social network VKontakte (since the end of February, a message about its imminent blocking has been spreading on the resource), however, another closure of the site was not destined to happen. Realnoe Vremya decided to look into the situation and collected five facts about the problems of the popular social network.

Is it true that VKontakte will be closed?

Well, work has begun to suppress unnecessary activity. Under the pretext of fighting piracy, they will first close audio recordings, then they will take away videos, then they will begin to block groups and public pages under the pretext of fighting extremism and child suicide. By the fall of 2018, there will be little left of VK. The final closure of VKontakte should take place before the new presidential elections, that is, by 2024.

Experts reacted to the news with skepticism. The fact is that Pavel Durov, with whom the special services were unable to agree on the closure of opposition groups, left the company a long time ago and now VKontakte is controlled by a pro-government oligarch, so no problem with censorship will arise in VKontakte - everything will be blocked quickly and quietly. Secondly, there are many more VKontakte users than citizens going to the polls, and the closure of the social network could result in truly massive discontent.

Is it all Pavel Durov's fault?

In addition to the hashtag, the opinion spread among users that regular disruptions began exactly after Pavel Durov left the company. On April 1, 2014, on his VKontakte page, Durov announced that he was leaving the post of general director of the company.

In his appeal, the creator of the social network argued that in 2013, his freedom of action as CEO of VKontakte was greatly reduced. He complained that the principles underlying the social network had become increasingly difficult to defend and that formal positions in the current conditions were of no interest to him. Experts are sure that in this way Durov hinted at serious pressure from the security forces demanding the closure of opposition groups “VK”, censorship and access to personal data of users.

Durov sold his shares to the famous media manager and former CEO of MegaFon Ivan Tavrin, and the entire social network became the property of Mail.Ru Group.

The opinion spread among users that regular disruptions began exactly after Pavel Durov left the company. Photo aif.by

My VKontakte was closed at work. What to do?

Blocking VKontakte at work is just the first sign. If it is beneficial for the head of your company to deprive you of access to VK, then can you imagine how beneficial it would be for the head of the entire country to deprive you of access to VKontakte? Sooner or later this will happen, but most likely by the 2024 elections.

But what to do if VK has already been turned off at work? The most obvious thing is to be on your phone. But if you want to do it from your work computer, then just connect a VPN. The service costs only $5 per month, but you can even find it for free.

Accidents in data and regular failures

Rumors about the impending closure of VK were significantly fueled by a large-scale failure on the social network that occurred at the beginning of this week and lasted for several hours. But it is worth noting that VKontakte, like any other resource, is at risk of becoming unavailable for a number of technical reasons.

In general, in the history of VK there are several major operational failures. One of the most notable occurred on July 25, 2010: the site remained inaccessible for more than four hours due to a power outage in the data center. Another failure occurred on July 27, 2014: then, as a result of an accident in one of the data centers, the site was also unavailable to users.

On August 4, 2015, the VKontakte website remained inaccessible for more than two hours. According to the company's press service, the cause of the problem was a physical break in the cable connecting the data centers. It was later reported that the cause of the failure was “a fatal combination of circumstances.” Increasing cases of VKontakte inaccessibility led to the popularization of the hashtag #vkzhivi on Twitter.

Be careful, VKontakte is closing

The panic with the closure of the social network was provoked by one of the users who posted a message that VKontakte would soon be closed due to numerous violations in the field of privacy policy. They say that the social network collects too much data on Russians. The provocateur insisted that the social network would be closed to everyone unless the user posted a post on his wall urging him not to close VK with the tags:

#Bring back Durov
#vk_live
#VkWon'tBecome

Considering the low average IQ of social network users, this joke has been circulating on VK for quite some time.

Why won't March 6 become a “day of mourning”?

Since the end of February, a message has been circulating on the social network VKontakte about the imminent closure of the resource, and on the eve of publications with the same content, spammers posted at a rate of once a minute. In the test of the post, a specific closing date is named - March 6, 2017 - and the person in charge who made the official statement is German Klimenko, who, according to the authors of the message, is the press secretary of VK (in fact, Klimenko holds the position of Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation for Internet issues).

German Klimenko has already commented on the situation to the press, saying that everyone is openly laughing at this message, and he is not the press secretary of the social network, which, by the way, will not be closed.

Note that even such a clumsy presentation of the message could cause a small surge of panic and increased attention to the news about the closure of the resource. At the same time, users of the social network were frightened by the fact that after VK is blocked, their personal information will be publicly available, and to avoid this, they need to copy this message to their wall.

Secrets of VKontakte

A selection of interesting facts about your favorite social network:

Did you know that there are about 100 ways to block VKontakte, but none of them gives a 100% guarantee? VKontakte is invincible!
Every year it becomes more and more difficult to change the first and last name on VKontakte. Why do you think? The answer will surprise you.
Did you know that VK runs on the Linux operating system? Only thanks to this, the social network pleases us with stable operation and high productivity. If VKontakte servers were on Windows, then the social network would have been polluted with viruses long ago and would have crashed every other day.
Experts tried to hack VKontakte via Ubuntu.
The most popular video for adults on VKontakte is a naked saleswoman dancing in a general store from Maria Evdokimova.
My aunt’s VKontakte page was hacked. She describes the torment she had to go through before the stupid VK admins restored her access. Shock!
What happens if you guess the password for someone else’s VKontakte page and log in? They will immediately solder 2 articles of the Criminal Code and give you a two-room coin. Real story.
Why VKontakte cannot be trusted with personal information.

VKontakte is preparing to close

The leading social network in terms of the number of convicted users is now demonstrating maternal care. The leading social network in terms of the number of convicted users is now demonstrating maternal care.

The social network VKontakte announced a privacy reform due to several high-profile cases of extremism for reposting pictures and liking. Managing director Andrei Rogozov said on August 14 that the company opposes “unreasonable” harassment of users.

“We are extremely concerned about this. Law enforcement agencies often do not take into account the context, do not distinguish a publication from a repost, and equate an image with a dubious joke to truly dangerous criminal offenses,” Rogozov writes on his page.

The social network plans to hide users behind privacy settings from the all-seeing eye of “Comrade Major.” Within two weeks, close the list of people who reposted the picture or post, leaving it available exclusively to the authors.

VK’s concern is not limited to this measure. Rogozov assured that the audience will soon be given the option of complete privacy. If desired, only friends can see the page. And more than that. With one click, the resident will be able to hide all personal account information from prying eyes. Be it photos, videos, music, subscriptions and so on.

Last week, the Mail.ru Group corporation, which owns VKontakte, made it clear that the disease cannot be cured by fighting the symptoms. In its corporate blog, the Russian IT giant advocated reform of legislation, law enforcement practice and amnesty for those already imprisoned for the pictures.

Even earlier, on June 25, the head of the Rodina party, Alexei Zhuravlev , and a member of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation faction, Sergei Shargunov, introduced a bill to the State Duma excluding criminal punishment under Article 282 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. The government canceled the initiative. The official review states that the document does not justify the abolition of criminal prosecution and contains contradictions. Politics Today whether Mail.ru Group supported the bill . It was not possible to promptly contact the deputies.

Digital economy expert Arseny Shcheltsin noted in a commentary to “PS” that lobbying tasks cannot be solved overnight, and VKontakte users need to be appeased and reassured right now.

“VKontakte has an operational task - to neutralize the negativity towards the use of social networks. – the agency’s interlocutor believes. — It will not be solved instantly with the help of a lobbying resource. The organizer needs to show that social networks live by their own rules. Who is really to blame, and who is an ordinary participant who is simply included in this information field. And participants who distribute illegal recordings are simply simply using a social network, and not doing anything illegal. Therefore, VKontakte wants to do such an experiment. Disable some functionality and add additional hiding, which will create a contrast shower for law enforcement agencies that want to deprive people of their rights for reposting.”

The ambulance for VK users reminded the expert of the history of Yandex blogs. When the law on the register of bloggers regulating the activities of free authors appeared, the company decided to hide statistics reflecting the number of blog users.

“This initiative ended in nothing. – Shcheltsin noted. — In the end, we decided to close this registry, but we lost the resource because it helped punish users, but not always violators. Now there is an absolutely similar situation, when the functionality of the social network is being reduced in order to protect users. On the one hand, this is good for users, on the other hand, it will negatively affect commercial and analytical companies that promote materials on the Internet. They won’t be able to track whether real reposts are being made and so on.”

According to the Vedomosti publication, citing an analytical report, of the 182 sentences passed in 2021 based on materials on social networks, 138 were on the VKontakte network. Lawyers from the international human rights group Agora explained that the number one social network in Russia readily cooperates with law enforcement agencies.

Most users have come to terms with advertising in the feed and under the main menu of the page. But advertising inserts in video and even more so in audio cause excessive irritation. And this is another reason for the gradual outflow of people from the Russian social network

Despite all these problems, vk.com still remains the most popular social network in Russia and one of the most visited in the CIS. VKontakte has many interesting features and features that you can learn about from our Yandex.Zen channel.

What dangers await your children VKontakte
I deleted my VK account for good: 4 main reasons
How to write a VKontakte comment in orange letters and what does Kojima have to do with it?

Will VKontakte be closed? I think no.

I read somewhere that VK is valued at more than $8 billion. Most likely this is outdated information and now it costs much more. Understanding what kind of bigots are circulating in this social network (and in similar large ones), it is unlikely that its owners will so easily allow VK to be closed.
Imagine what a high will be raised by millions of users when their worlds are closed in virtual space, where many spend most of their free and working time! So it won't be long before mass unrest.
Rumor has it that VKontakte is a golden source of various kinds of information for FSB officers about people of interest to them. Agree that if they really somehow have the ability to track user data (watch correspondence, study any account information that is closed from prying eyes), then this is a very convenient way to monitor the mood of the population. And because each page has the user’s email and mobile number attached to it, then, theoretically, it will be much easier to find out which number, if necessary, needs to be listened to and which mailbox to hack to study its contents.

What do you think, will VKontakte be closed?

Competition

All social networks and information resources are almost literally fighting among themselves for people’s attention. The main income of social networks comes from advertising inserts. This means that the more people log into a social network and the more time they spend there, the greater the income of the Internet site.

Each person's time is limited to 24 hours a day. People physically cannot devote enough time to social networks. Therefore, users registered in several social networks eventually focus on one and forget about the rest.

Currently, a large number of young people have migrated to Instagram and the now popular instant messengers.

Paid music

One of the undeniable advantages of VKontakte over other social networks at one time was the ability to listen to music without restrictions. This is what allowed VK to quickly gain a huge audience at the dawn of its existence. Hundreds of thousands of users went to the social network to chat with friends and read news while listening to their favorite track.

Paid subscriptions to music, advertising inserts, restrictions on background listening and other innovations are scaring off old followers of the social network. Therefore, more and more users are looking for entertainment “on the side.”