{"id":4995,"date":"2026-02-13T09:03:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:03:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/?p=4995"},"modified":"2026-02-13T09:03:50","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T09:03:50","slug":"russia-bans-whatsapp-for-kremlin-linked-platform-max","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/2026\/02\/13\/russia-bans-whatsapp-for-kremlin-linked-platform-max\/","title":{"rendered":"Russia bans WhatsApp for Kremlin-linked platform, Max"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n<p>Authorities in Russia have banned the use of\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/clygd10pg5lo\">WhatsApp<\/a>, affecting roughly 100 million users as the Eastern European country pushes people toward state-controlled messaging platform, Max.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Media reports indicate that the Meta owned messaging platform has disappeared from Russia&#8217;s digital space as the country tightens controls on private messaging. Last year, Russia banned voice calls on WhatsApp slowly pushing out users from the popular messaging app<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>For months, authorities in Russia have been aggressive on Meta platforms WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram, terming them &#8220;extremist.&#8221;<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Last month, state-controlled news agency TASS reported that WhatsApp could face a permanent ban in Russia with the warning coming after communications watchdog Roskomnadzor citing breach of laws on data storage and content moderation.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Currently, YouTube is also on the radar in Russia, with media reports indicating that some pages have been taken out or take forever to load.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Meanwhile, authorities in the country have been pushing for the adoption of state-controlled Max, a new messaging app named the country\u2019s \u201cnational messenger\u201d last year.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Max is owned by VKontakte, which is arguably the largest social media company in Russia, and reportedly controlled by people close to President Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<p>Analysts note that Max provides zero encryption of communications between parties, implying that the government can practically access and read anything sent on the platform.<\/p>\r\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Authorities in Russia have banned the use of\u00a0WhatsApp, affecting roughly 100 million users as the Eastern European country pushes people&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4996,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,153,31,15],"tags":[417,416],"class_list":["post-4995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","category-politics","category-trends","tag-max","tag-russia-bans-whatsapp-for-kremlin-linked-platform"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/pexels-anton-8100-4132538-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4995"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4998,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4995\/revisions\/4998"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsroomhub.co.ke\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}