voidly
Active Incident

Confirmed: censorship detected in Russia

Russia · August 9, 2026 · Ongoing

Evidence

98%
Anomaly Rate
16
Measurements
89%
Confidence

What This Means

98% of 16 network tests from Russia failed to reach these services. Global baseline failure rate is typically 1-3%. This 95+ percentage point difference strongly indicates intentional blocking.

How We Detected This

Data Sourceooni + censoredplanet
ML ModelGradientBoosting v3.3 (LOCO median F1 0.87, honest across 127 countries)
Confidence Score89% certainty of censorship
Detection TimeAugust 9, 2026

Corroborating Evidence (42)

Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.

OONIOpen Observatory of Network Interference16 records
blocking
"OONI signal: 438/526 measurements anomalous (83.3%)"OONI report
Signal value: 0.83
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
blocking
"OONI whatsapp: 319/377 measurements anomalous (84.6%)"OONI report
Signal value: 0.85
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
blocking
"OONI telegram: 308/362 measurements anomalous (85.1%)"OONI report
Signal value: 0.85
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
tor-blocking
"OONI tor: 351/357 measurements anomalous (98.3%)"OONI report
Signal value: 0.98
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
blocking
"OONI signal: 528/612 measurements anomalous (86.3%)"OONI report
Signal value: 0.86
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
+ 11 more OONI records
Censored PlanetUniversity of Michigan research26 records
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 201/201 probes anomalous (100.0%) for bbc.com"Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 122/122 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chat.openai.com"Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 108/108 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chatgpt.com"Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 123/123 probes anomalous (100.0%) for claude.ai"Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 158/158 probes anomalous (100.0%) for facebook.com"Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 9, 2026
View source →
+ 21 more Censored Planet records

Affected Services (4)

SignalTelegramTorWhatsApp

What we cannot say

  • Who caused it — measurement data alone does not attribute this to any government, ISP, or other actor.
  • Intent — anomalous or unreachable measurements indicate interference, not a stated motive or a deliberate-vs-incidental determination.
  • Which networks — no specific ASN/ISP is identified for this incident.
  • The mechanism — we cannot state whether this was DNS tampering, TLS/SNI reset, an HTTP blockpage, throttling, or an infrastructure outage.
  • A confirmed duration — we report the observation window, not a verified start/stop of any block.
  • Sub-national scope — measurement is aggregated at the country level; we cannot localize to a province, city, or network segment.

Cite This Incident

Voidly Research. (2026). Confirmed: censorship detected in Russia [RU-2026-3009]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/RU-2026-3009

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