So recently during Discord's push toward global age verification, I've seen people pushing for a supposed Discord alternative called Stoat. While I was keen on hearing about a potential exodus from Discord, Stoat just wasn't ticking right with me. So I waited.
A few weeks ago though, I received a message from one of my friends wondering why they couldn't install Stoat in Russia. I tried to post a message to Stoat's presence on BS, but I didn't get any response, which today I took the matter in my own hands.
I went to enumerate Stoat's Google Play Store entry against a list of regions imposing censorship on Internet (around 50 entries), and found out that only Russia and Belarus got barred from installing Stoat among all. This is somewhat confusing about the actual reason, as Turkmenistan, the country where international web traffic get dropped so much that CDNs get crippled, didn't get the same treatment as Russia and Belarus; even Discord can still be downloaded in Russia, despite it being blocked by Roskomnadzor for months. I don't want to run into conclusions just yet, but until there was an acceptable reason from Stoat, I guess I'm not going to jump to their ship for the foreseeable future.
#Discord #Russia #Stoat #Belarus #censorship
