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Diplomat slams Big Tech’s global outage flop, calls for Russia to build up own Internet

Maria Zakharova noted that "this type of lockdown could happen in the blink of an eye, given the developments accelerating in the US"

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs/TASS

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova

© Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs/TASS

MOSCOW, October 5. /TASS/. The massive worldwide disruption of Silicon Valley-based social media and messaging apps on Monday should encourage Russia to build up its own segment of information technology (IT), Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on the Solovyov Live YouTube channel on Tuesday.

Commenting on the global outage of social networks including Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, the diplomat noted that "this is the same story about the very information security," which Moscow introduces "so many resolutions offering interaction and cooperation."

"This story is <…> that we are obligated to develop our domestic segment of information technology," she said. "We should realize that this type of lockdown may happen in the blink of an eye, given the developments accelerating in the US."

In this regard, Zakharova pointed to the fallacy of those who believe that by working on enhancing its own segment of the Internet, Russia will end up shutout from the worldwide web. "Yesterday, they showed you everything," she noted. "It's not us who turn ourselves off, but rather their technologies are plummeting to such a level that three and a half billion people ended up disconnected."

"It’s not a matter of entertainment for a lot of people," she stressed. For dozens of people it is pivotal. They didn't just make a financial bet on it, they devoted their lives and fate to it."

On Monday, according to the data of Downdetector service which monitors the activities of popular Internet websites, users reported a massive disruption in the activities of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Given the outage and disruption, the shares of large IT companies plunged. According to American experts Doug Madory, director of internet analysis at Kentik, and Brian Krebs, a well-known journalist in cybersecurity, the disruption of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp was caused by the fact that on the morning of October 4, EST, someone inside Facebook updated routing protocols that allow browsers to find the addresses of these social networks' sites.

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