Russia's federal censor tries to win over Internet users by trolling Telegram's flash mob

Russian federal officials have a wonderful sense of humor and they’re desperate for people to know it. Roskomnadzor, the agency responsible for blocking millions of IP addresses in an effort to cut off access to Telegram, is calling on the public to create elaborate origami soccer balls and throw them out their windows in sync at 7 p.m. on Sunday.

The flashmob, ostensibly in support of high quality communications during the FIFA World Cup, is clearly intended to mock a similar campaign by Telegram, in which the instant messenger’s supporters fly paper airplanes out their windows at the same time on Sunday in defense of Internet freedom.

Roskomnadzor announced its flash mob on its official Vkontakte page, sharing a link to a 20-minute YouTube video explaining how to construct an origami soccer ball. In comments on the Vkontakte post, hundreds of Internet users angrily demanded that the agency stop disrupting online services unrelated to Telegram.

Since April 16, the Russian authorities have blocked roughly 20 million IP addresses, including servers operated by Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Digital Ocean. Roskomnadzor’s crackdown has disrupted a wide range of unrelated onlines services that rely on cloud computing hosted on blocked servers. Telegram, meanwhile, has remained accessible to most Russian Internet users by utilizing a variety of circumvention methods.