Good piece arguing that Telegram is under Russian control:
https://texty.org.ua/articles/112347/eight-signsof-danger-telegram-one-russias-most-successful-projects/

Argues that the 2018 "blocking" wasn't a real attempt. I don't know enough about the mechanics involved to judge this

Not a good piece, a lot of history irrelevant to the statement, 0 arguements, only speculations of the kind "hmmm, suspicious!" to the stories which have other explanation.

"Wasnt real attempt"

That is what russian government always says to keep face when fails miserably: "we did not attempt to do that".

Capturing kyiv in three days and poisoning navalny are also examples where they failed and then the propaganda played the card "we did not even attempt, but if we did everybody would be dead already".

They provide evidence for all of these claims:

• Lots of Russian funding, which they lied about

• Some kind of "agreement on terrorism" with Russian government

• Fake office in UAE, which they lied about

• Durov's history of cooperating with the FSB when needed at VKontakte

Durov gave up VK under the threat of prison. That is not cooperation.

Other points are not relevant to the statement of the article header that Telegram is dangerous.

If Telegram gets blocked on top of these YouTube shenanigans, that would be hilarious...

Roskomnadzor tried to block Telegram many years ago, but eventually gave up and allowed it. Now it's really popular in Russia, and the thing is, many YouTube channels migrated to Telegram. Blocking Telegram for seemingly no reason would be a super unpopular move.

Effectively blocked, or only formally blocked?

Effectively.

https://meduza.io/feature/2024/08/21/v-rossii-perestali-otkryvatsya-telegram-whatsapp-steam-discord-i-mnogie-drugie-servisy-chto-proishodit-neponyatno not only those 2, but dozens other services were disrupted too. Same way it happened the previous time they tried to block telegram.

it took down way too many services for this to be an intentional disruption to Telegram.

Also, stepping back, Telegram is Russian owned. Why would Putin take down the social media app he’s most likely to have backdoors into? I assume he’s already got full access to the app, why shut it down now?

1) Telegram is THE ONLY russian service not collabörating with russian government. Durov (creator) is basically an opposition.

2) It is not the first time they try to block it .

2) Previous intentional disruption of the telegram couple years ago causes the same scale of services to fail.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_of_Telegram_in_Russia

There might be something going on in Russia that the regime really doesn't want people to know about

Maybe it's just the drones hitting Moscow

Or maybe this is a Ukrainian cyberattack