Russian regulator told Apple and Google to remove LinkedIn app from App Store and Google Play; app is no longer available for download in Russia
WASHINGTON — Smartphone users in Russia can no longer download the LinkedIn app on iPhone or Android devices, following a similar move in China to block The New York Times app on iPhones.
Context & Ripple Effects
LinkedIn's website has been blocked in Russia since November, when the company refused to move Russian user data onto servers inside the country under the local data-localization law (officially blocked after failing to transfer user data). What is new here is the enforcement mechanism: rather than just filtering network traffic, the Russian regulator went to Apple and Google directly, and both complied by delisting the LinkedIn app from their stores.
First-order effects
- Russian iPhone and Android users can no longer download the LinkedIn app at all, closing off the main channel through which professionals in Russia would have adopted or re-adopted the service.
- Apple and Google have established that they will execute a national regulator's takedown demand against a third party's app, converting their stores into instruments of Russian internet policy.
Second-order effects
- The move hands every government a template: if a foreign service resists local rules, pressure the two US gatekeepers rather than the service itself — a playbook later visible when Google pulled RT and Sputnik apps from the Play Store (following Apple's similar removal) and when Apple delisted VK's apps over UK sanctions while they stayed on Google Play.
- For LinkedIn, already locked out of the Russian web, losing store distribution removes any realistic path back into the market without capitulating on data localization.
Third-order effects
- As the related coverage argues, the concentration of app distribution in two stores means censorship increasingly runs through corporate compliance decisions in Cupertino and Mountain View instead of national firewalls — one legal letter replaces an entire blocking apparatus (centralized app stores make government censorship easier).
- Data-localization regimes gain a second lever beyond fines and site blocks: control over whether a foreign company can even reach a country's smartphone users, raising the cost of resisting such laws for any global consumer service.
The trend: Governments are learning to enforce national internet rules through the Apple-Google app-store duopoly, making store compliance — not network blocking — the decisive chokepoint for foreign services.