Replying to a friend’s message, ordering a pizza or hailing a ride on your handheld device may seem like simple tasks in a fully wired 21st-century city like Moscow. But residents of the Russian capital are finding that their smartphones have been dumbed down amid an unprecedented shutdown of the mobile internet.
Russia has long operated some digital censorship, banning social media apps like Facebook and Instagram. But since early March, Moscow has experienced internet and mobile service outages on a level previously unseen. Residents of the capital – a city of 13 million people – complain they cannot navigate around the center or use their favorite mobile apps. The interruptions appear to have had a knock-on effect of…