Russians In Mah Began Forcibly Subscribing To Solovyov And Z-propaganda Channels

When I try to unsubscribe, the unsubscribe button doesn't work and the messenger hangs immediately.

Users of the Russian state messenger Max are complaining en masse about forced subscriptions to propaganda channels, including Z-publics, from which it is impossible to unsubscribe. According to "Meduza", citing posts on the Picaboo portal, some users have discovered channels in their app that they did not subscribe to, including the channel of propagandist Vladimir Solovyov and "Army of Russia." When trying to unsubscribe, the button fails to work, and for some users the messenger hangs immediately.

The user Kozotrah1975 posted a video where he unsuccessfully clicks on the "Unsubscribe from channel" button time after time. "On my phone it's fine, but on the PC version there's really a bunch of channels I didn't subscribe to. And when you click unsubscribe, nothing happens," grem17 confirms. Hexpl0rer complains that he is subscribed to spam channels again after each unsubscribe attempt. Some users note that the problem is solved in the security settings, if you allow only contacts to add themselves to chats and channels.

With this background, the authorities are actively promoting Max among the population: the messenger is being introduced through school and house chats, employers, "Gosuservices", banks and even the network "VkusVill". At the same time, Roskomnadzor restricts the work of other popular messengers - WhatsApp and Telegram. However, experts doubt the prospects of Max. Thus, Igor Demidov, CEO of the D-Agency agency, notes the reluctance of users to switch to Max, and Alexander Tunik ("Runet Rating") points to the lack of clear advantages of the messenger. Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Society for the Protection of the Internet, points out that Max's privacy policy explicitly states that data will be transferred to the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Tax Service and the Bank of Russia upon request. Researchers on GitHub found that the application tracks geolocation, the list of installed programs and can record sound, video and even typed text.

In the meantime, a survey by IT publication "Durov's Code" showed that only every sixth Telegram user is ready to switch to Max in case the messenger is completely blocked. In the survey, which involved more than 3,000 people, only 16.8% said they were ready to do so. The majority of respondents plan to bypass the restrictions and continue using Telegram in case of blocking. As of March 17, the level of Telegram blocking in Russia is 80%.

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