By Ben Kerrigan-
Russia is launching its instagram cloan on Monday, promoting the app as having “servers and a Russian-based data centre”.
The ambitious move follows Instagram’s parent company Meta’s decision to relax rules on users calling for violence against Russian soldiers.
In typical fashion, Moscow retaliated by branding Meta an ‘extremist organization’ in the process, and blocking access to Instagram.
Russia’s divorce from instagram has affected hundreds of thousands of social media users in Russia, forcing many to choose between switching to its nation’s new social media platform, or do without having instagram altogether. One major problem for disgruntled instagram users from Russia will be the loss of some of their followers, or people they were previously following who would have no part with Rossgram, which is likely to be shunned by West as part of the same sanctions. Not many people from other parts of the world would want to be on Rossgram, limiting the audience and engagement available to those who may have otherwise contemplated change.
Russian reality TV star Olga Buzova has already decried the loss of her followers in a video she posted on the platform
Buzova, who has 23.3 million Instagram followers, said: ‘I am not afraid of admitting that I do not want to lose you. I do not know what the future holds.
‘I just shared my life, my work and my soul,’ she added. ‘I did not do this all as a job for me, this is a part of my soul. It feels like a big part of my heart, and my life is being taken away from me.’
Russian tech moguls are building an alternative, called ‘Rossgram’ that is apparently slated to launch on March 28.
Alexander Zobov, the PR director behind the idea has claimed it will be an ‘opportunity’ for Russians missing the American social media platform.
‘My partner Kirill Filimonov and our group of developers were already ready for this turn of events and decided not to miss the opportunity to create a Russian analogue of a popular social network beloved by our compatriots,’ he told the existing Russian social network, VKontakte.
Crowdfunding and paid access to certain content is to be available on the app. designed to rival instagram and attempt to restore the lost feeling belonging to the social media world.
It will be a long shot for Russia to Rival instagram with Rossgram, or fully compensate for the loss of being banned from a global social media platform.
According to a photo shared by Zobov on Vkontakte, Rossgram’s colour scheme and layout will bear a strong resemblance to Instagram.
Accompanying the withdrawal of the US and UK from Russia’s huge oil and gas industry, was the shut down of other major companies and services in the country either partially or entirely.
This includes: PayPal, TikTok, Netflix, Spotify, McDonald’s, Starbucks, Apple, Zara, Coca-Cola, Shell, Ikea, Prada etc.
Russian businesses could carry right on operating using trademarked names of companies like McDonald’s and Starbucks even though they’ve technically left Russia.
And if they want to go right ahead and create an identical Instagram clone for everyone to use, well – that’s totally legal now too.
Some of the most popular social media platforms in Russia include YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook. But with Russia limiting access to those platforms — or in some cases blocking them entirely — Russians are fleeing to the next-best still-active platforms. In some cases, they’re even creating their own on the fly.
Clubhouse and Telegram have been described as platforms for anti-war Russian civilians to coordinate, but also as a breeding ground for Russian propaganda. While the platforms have in some ways allowed people in the country to communicate and speak more freely about the war, they’ve also allowed Russian-run channels to publish content that would be blocked elsewhere.