After access restrictions on Telegram were tightened in mid-March, 84% of the audience of independent media continued using the platform. It had previously been reported that views fell across all types of channels: pro-government, opposition, and regional media.
At the same time, pro-government channels were said to have been hit 2.5 times harder than independent ones. On average, opposition media lost one in six readers, or 16.5% of views. The drop reached 41% for pro-government channels and 45% for regional media.
According to the available data, the audience decline has now stabilized: compared with the previous week, channels did not lose additional views. This may indicate that there were no further tightening measures and that the audience size has reached a new equilibrium.
By these estimates, the indicators stabilized on the Friday before last, when the authorities strengthened the blocking measures. At that point, the share of anomalies in access attempts to Telegram rose from 18% to 75%, according to data from the international research project OONI.
Since then, the share of anomalies has hardly changed, and a similar pattern has been observed in post view counts. This suggests that after the sharp deterioration in access, the situation stopped changing significantly.
Sources cited by RBC said Telegram was expected to be blocked in the first days of April, while according to The Bell the date was April 1. For now, no stronger restrictions than those seen at the end of March are evident, although there is still too little data from early April to draw firm conclusions about further trends in views.