russia Is Driving Society into a Controlled Messenger

In russia, citizens are being increasingly aggressively forced to switch to the state-owned messenger Max, which is already becoming a tool of coercion and control. For example, in penza, students of the local gymnasium No. 13 were not allowed to attend a New Year’s disco because they refused to install the app.

A similar situation has been reported in novorossiysk: students at the Ushakov State Maritime University are being forced to install Max under threat of being denied admission to exams and internships. Teachers have warned that students’ electronic grade books are now linked to the national messenger, and registration will be checked by name. Besides, students are required to subscribe to the “necessary” channels in the app, emphasizing that this issue is “under the control of the administration”.

Parents of schoolchildren from moscow region also report on the school chats’ forced switching to Max. Teachers are ordered to transfer all official communication to the state messenger. Those who ask for alternative communication channels are simply ignored.

In nizhny novgorod, schoolchildren say that without Max, they effectively lose access to information about their studies, as schedules, announcements, and assignments are only published there.

In the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, this messenger is generally used as a tool of isolation: it only works with russian and belarusian SIM cards, making it difficult for people to communicate with the free world. In parallel, russia is blocking alternative services such as Telegram and WhatsApp.

The kremlin’s strategy is clear: under the guise of “convenience” and “security”, it wants to impose a tool of digital control on society, deprive people of choice, and limit privacy and freedom of communication as much as possible.