Russia Bans LinkedIn

I would not be surprised in the future to see a lot of countries attempt to ban foreign social networks. Basically, with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, the US government has defacto access to a treasure trove of who knows who, who influences who, and want skills everyone has. This information would be very expensive to collect by intelligence services, but with these US companies, is just handed on a platter.

Basically, if you are a geopolitical rival of the US, you would have to be a fool to allow your people to use these American services.

The article doesn't describe how the ban is technically enforced. I'm not aware of a great Russian firewall so I speculate it's either self-enforced (LinkedIn agreed to reject users who enter Russia as their country), or enforced by ISPs.

The first is unlikely, the second is easily bypassed.

Does anyone here know?

There should be "2016" in title since it's banned for almost half of year.

Not sure who it helps. Low-earning Russians weren't really using it. High-earning ones that need to use it, e.g. Russian investors, will just be finding ways to still use it - VPN, travel to Estonia etc.

Another step to the balkanization of the internet.

Well why don't they store Russian data on Russian servers? Why is the law "unenforceable"?