What was it that convinced Google and Amazon to no longer allow this particular censorship evasion?
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/04/in-ef...
As moxie says in the blog post
>The idea behind domain fronting was that to block a single site, you’d have to block the rest of the internet as well. In the end, the rest of the internet didn’t like that plan.
Russia is on record as wishing to go a different path than the Great Firewall of China. From statements I read including Putin, they're saying they want to avoid a deep packet inspection regime à la NSA or China except when they've got a court order to go after someone in particular.
Telegram isn't being banned over access to a particular someone's messages, it's over handing them everything.
Considering that Russia has banned all of Wikipedia in the past, among numerous others, it's a little naive to take Putin at his word here.
When Telegram sued, the court proceedings were published by zona.media: https://zona.media/online/2018/03/20/tlgrmvs . I have read them in full (in translation, but it was specifically addressed and crystal clear with regard to this matter). The transcript firmly establishes that it is factually incorrect that this matter is "over handing them everything". That was reported by some outlets, but the zona.media reporter covering the court proceedings complained that it was immediately misreported. There was a bombing that claimed fatalities, it was established that Telegram was able to provide the decrypted chats of the suspects, the FSB got a lawful order for those conversations, and I believe the relevant keys. (If Telegram really doesn't key its users' conversations using separate derived keys, their crypto is even worse than we thought!) Russia has a law specifically protecting the privacy of private conversations, and the FSB specifically acknowledged this right in court and specified that their order was lawful and narrow.
The hugely broad blocking is precisely because they are not getting into wholesale deep packet inspection. These episodes are embarrassing for them, as confirmed by recent statements by two of Putin's advisers, but they do it to pursue the rule of law. I am a fan of less government intervention in general, but if the government intervenes, I want it to be transparent and follow due process. At least in this case, Russia is doing that...it's just ridiculously heavy-handed.
Nations that lean authoritarian are teching up their sovereign walled gardens, banning external/ungovernable services as soon as it's feasible.
The long play is to knuckle under and defer to local governments, as Amazon, Google and Facebook have shown.