Russian authorities banned yesterday Wikipedia's view across the country because of a page containing information about a cannabis product.
The ban was stopped this morning, but nonetheless its Russian users Wikipedia they could only see a blank page. For this reason and for as many areas in Russia έχει σταματήσει η απαγόρευση της ιστοσελίδας, οι admins της Wikipedia πρόσθεσαν ένα banner στην κορυφή της σελίδας με πληροφορίες που εξηγούν γιατί διέταξε η ρώσικη government the ban.
There is a text describing the product on Wikipedia's page charas, a form of waste produced by the cannabis resin.
A court in a small town in southern Russia concluded that this page contained harmful information about drugs, and ordered Roskomnadzor (Federal Supervisory Service in the field of telecommunications) to block only the relevant page due to the law "On protection of children from information harmful to their health and development".
Because Wikipedia uses HTTPS by default for all links, most Russian ISPs were not able to block only that particular page and were forced to ban the site altogether to avoid sanctions.
Αυτή δεν είναι η πρώτη φορά που μια Ρωσική απαγόρευση σχετική με το διαδίκτυο ματαιώνεται λόγω των συνδέσεων HTTPS. Τον Ιούλιο, η Roskomnadzor διέταξε τους παρόχους υπηρεσιών του διαδικτύου να μπλοκάρουν τη machine Wayback (internet archive) due to an archived page called “Solitary Jihad in Russia.”
And after that, the Russian authorities also banned Reddit in the same way, just because there was a reference to cultivating hallucinogenic mushrooms.
When Reddit changed to https last June, the whole site was blocked. Reddit succumbed and a few days later banned users from Russia this page.