Will Russia legally prohibit using VPN services or personal VPNs before the end of 2023?
43
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resolved Jan 1
Resolved
NO

This market resolves YES if, before the end of 2023, it becomes illegal in Russia to use a VPN for personal purposes. If it is allowed only with special permission or in a way that potentially makes your traffic more vulnerable, this market also resolves YES.

If you find any ambiguities in the market resolution criteria, please notify me in the comments.

UPD 2022-12-23. Clarification: if it is illegal to use VPN services except for a limited whitelist (including a scenario where only Russian VPN services are allowed), then this market also resolves YES.

Other markets about internet censorship in Russia in 2023:

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predicted NO

@AVS While there's a tiny bit of 2023 left, I think this can be safely resolved No.

bought Ṁ3,000 of NO

Looks like there's a ban scheduled to take effect in March

predicted NO
predicted NO

@mxxun first page google results. But actually many articles have the policy attributed to one senator, so maybe it's not official

predicted NO

@MichaelWheatley Are y'all allergic to giving specific sources or what.

Sorry.

An October article here talks about the senator saying something weird (according to legislating committees); about possibly streamlining/expanding procedures for the internet-censoring body (roskomnadzor) to block e.g. sites providing VPN instructions to circumvent the censorship; and about so-far-consistent messaging that vpn use is legal on the user side and is intended to remain so.

predicted NO

I was mainly looking up whether the market would resolve NO, and talk of a ban next year is evidence for no such ban existing today. But since that's all I was looking at, I didn't want to vouch for the reliability of the claims about a future ban.

What if there's a whitelist of VPN providers which can be used, or only Russian providers can be used?

@PavelSirotkin good one, thanks. Updated the market description.

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