Russia’s ‘national messenger’ was billed as a platform for the people. It’s dominated by state-run channels.
Roughly 70 percent of the channels on Russia’s “national messenger,” Max, were registered by government agencies and public institutions at the authorities’ behest, according to an analysis by the independent outlet Agentstvo.
The Russian authorities have been actively promoting Max as a new communications platform for the country. Developed by the state-controlled social media company VK, the messaging app recently added a “channels” feature, allowing users to broadcast posts to large audiences. Similar channels are one of the most popular features on Telegram — a platform Max is meant to rival.
On February 12, Max’s press service announced that the platform now hosts more than 170,000 public channels with a combined audience of 80.5 million followers. Agentstvo downloaded data on nearly 169,000 channels from MaxStat, an analytics service tied to the app. Most were created through Max’s “Partner Platform,” where state-affiliated and business accounts end in _gos or _biz, respectively.
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According to the outlet’s analysis, government entities registered at least 118,200 channels on Max — nearly 70 percent of the channels in the downloaded dataset. The bulk were set up by municipal authorities and state institutions (more than 70,000 channels), followed by schools (over 34,000), kindergartens (more than 19,000), and various administrative bodies (over 5,000).
Business channels account for about 13 percent of the total, roughly 21,600 channels, most often created by property management companies and homeowners’ associations. The remaining 29,100 channels, about 17 percent of the dataset, were not created through the Partner Platform. According to Agentstvo, these channels generally do not have any direct affiliation with the state.
Agentstvo estimates that the 169,000 channels it analyzed have a combined 88.3 million followers — a figure that reflects total subscriptions, not individual users. Only 26.3 million of those, or roughly 30 percent, are subscribed to state-run channels. On average, each government channel has about 220 followers.
In other words, most users of the “national messenger” appear to follow channels that are not formally linked to the state and do not carry the official _gos or _biz suffixes.
More than half of all Max subscriptions — 49.6 million — are concentrated among just one percent of the platform’s most popular channels, Agentstvo reports. Seven of the ten most-subscribed channels are either state-affiliated or explicitly propagandistic.
