MAX Messenger
What is this miracle that even works in a parking lot and what are its prospects?

Let's start with the prerequisites and tasks: why did it even appear and why (and most importantly, for whom?) is it needed?

In fact, a national messenger is not a purely Russian phenomenon; in many countries, the state intervenes in communication between citizens:

China — WeChat
UAE — BOTIM
France — Tchap
Germany — BwMessenger

This is not some political conspiracy or 1984. In reality, the issue of information flow is largely a matter of not only national but also personal security.

A bit of history:

2016 US Presidential Election.
Back then, the social network Facebook, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, found itself at the center of a scandal that would later be called interference in the US presidential election.

Initially, everything seemed harmless: ordinary ad posts targeted based on user interests. But soon it turned out that thousands of such ads were created and spread by troll factories, including those from abroad, to manipulate public opinion.
The ads, which outwardly resembled ordinary political posts, promoted Trump and attacked Hillary Clinton.

The main feature is that Facebook's algorithms themselves selected the audience that would "like" such messages — thereby creating ideal information bubbles.
Users saw exactly what reinforced their beliefs and saw nothing that could contradict them.
As a result, about 150 million people saw these materials — and many did not even realize they were part of a planned influence campaign.


Ordinary advertising, presented to the right people from the right angle, changed the course of an election — and this is in WhatsApp's home country, where regulators can get deep into Zuckerberg's... and the guys try to moderate.

What about other countries — in 2019, the same WhatsApp drove Indians to lynch random passersby due to fake news about child abductions. Because of this, they even added a new feature.

Someone might recall our local craziness — like the "blue" mammals on VKontakte that provoked children to "hmm" (well, you know). You might have also heard about the Columbine movement, A*E, and so on.

And all this — within our domestic networks, where control by law enforcement seems limitless.

In short, controlling "bad" information is a complex matter even "at home" on social networks. And after 2022, when disinformation became a real weapon and its volume grew catastrophically, controlling foreign services with complicated moderation access procedures became nearly impossible.

Moreover, nowadays most military operations are carried out not by people but by drones that operate on mobile networks and GPS. To protect the country, sometimes everything has to be jammed completely. So, to prevent this jamming from paralyzing life, they decided to create a "white list" of services, which logically includes the secure MAX.

If you're interested in the business potential, currently MAX is mainly used by government employees and their clients — schoolchildren, students and their parents, as well as those who don't want to use a VPN. In general, the VKontakte audience is gradually migrating there.
But very soon, almost all residents of the Russian Federation will be using it — not because of widespread blocks (I hope), but because of simple convenience: all services in one window. So the commercial potential of the app is very interesting.

And if you've heard stories about surveillance and wiretapping, I'll say right away: if you use any services from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Yandex — absolutely any — then you're already under the hood. Any mapping apps see all your movements, any browser (except geeky ones) tracks every page you visit. Not to mention — your internet provider knows literally everything about you.

IN SHORT: MAX is needed to control information flows and quickly combat disinformation, provide people with constant access to communication services in wartime, and prevent just anyone from influencing the opinions of millions.
If you want privacy — there's no place for you in the modern world, go live in the forest.