Egregoros

JUST IN: 🇷🇺 Russia officially blocks Meta's WhatsApp messaging app nationwide.

@Bernard

So it is spyware

It is (like basically everything these days), but the reason they banned it is almost certainly not that - but rather because CIA was found to be using it to coordinate their agents in Russia.

@cjd
Surely CIA and their agents will have no difficulty switching up comms.

Russia has long been warning their citizens that these US controlled comms channels will be shut down.
@EvolLove

It's actually a real challenge. If they were to login to matrix.cia.gov or something, Russia would instantly know who they all are. So they use stuff that a lot of other people use.
* Signal
* Whatsapp
* Gmail
* etc..

And so Russia blocks these services in order to get rid of all the innocent people that are using them, so that then if someone is using it, they can be pinned as CIA.