Active Incident
Confirmed: censorship detected in Russia
Russia · August 12, 2026 · Ongoing
Evidence
97%
Anomaly Rate
17
Measurements
89%
Confidence
What This Means
97% of 17 network tests from Russia failed to reach these services. Global baseline failure rate is typically 1-3%. This 94+ 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 12, 2026
Corroborating Evidence (42)
Evidence collected from multiple independent sources. Upstream claims shown in quotes are not Voidly assertions.
OONIOpen Observatory of Network Interference17 records
blocking
"OONI signal: 495/613 measurements anomalous (80.8%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.81
Aug 12, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI whatsapp: 332/406 measurements anomalous (81.8%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.82
Aug 12, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI telegram: 342/398 measurements anomalous (85.9%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.86
Aug 12, 2026
View source →blocking
"OONI facebook_messenger: 334/666 measurements anomalous (50.2%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.50
Aug 12, 2026
View source →tor-blocking
"OONI tor: 366/381 measurements anomalous (96.1%)"— OONI report
Signal value: 0.96
Aug 12, 2026
View source →+ 12 more OONI records
Censored PlanetUniversity of Michigan research25 records
dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 254/254 probes anomalous (100.0%) for bbc.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 12, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 105/105 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chat.openai.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 12, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 93/93 probes anomalous (100.0%) for chatgpt.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 12, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 104/104 probes anomalous (100.0%) for claude.ai"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 12, 2026
View source →dns-blocking
"DNS blocking detected: 240/240 probes anomalous (100.0%) for facebook.com"— Censored Planet report
Signal value: 1.00
Aug 12, 2026
View source →+ 20 more Censored Planet records
Affected Services (5)
Facebook MessengerSignalTelegramTorWhatsApp
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-2026-3016]. Voidly Global Censorship Index. https://voidly.ai/incident/RU-2026-3016
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