Vladimir Putin is building a super-app
Russians will not like it, but will have it on their phones anyway
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the Kremlin swiftly banned Facebook and Instagram; their parent company, Meta, was labelled an extremist organisation. Yet one Meta-owned social-media service—WhatsApp—survived. A court ruled that the app’s focus on private chats, rather than sharing information publicly, meant it could be spared. But it may have simply been too popular to block: WhatsApp says it has more than 100m users in Russia.
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This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline “Here’s looking at you”
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