Patriotism for the masses: While Shadaev pushes "local alternatives," he stays on "extremist" social media and uses Apple services
Maksut Shadaev, the Minister of Digital Development, has made headlines again: he promised to "strangle" foreign internet services while never letting go of Western-made products and communicating through "extremist" messengers.
At the TAdviser Summit, the official briskly relayed Putin’s message: foreign cloud services must be phased out and restricted if a "local alternative" exists. Apparently, in the Minister’s mind, "Gosuslugi" (State Services) is an alternative to Google, and "Odnoklassniki" replaces Facebook.
But in reality, Shadaev:
continues to use WhatsApp and Facebook — despite Meta’s status as an "extremist organization" in Russia;
has an iCloud account registered to a Gmail address, meaning he is tied to two services at once — Apple and Google — the very ones he intends to "strangle";
uses an Apple smartphone, even though the corporation officially left Russia back in 2022;
likes posts and replies within "banned" platforms even after they were designated as extremist.
And all of this comes from the Minister who was the first to propose giving security forces direct access to citizens’ private data.
It certainly sounds impressive: "strangling foreign services." Especially when you’re doing it from an iPhone.
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