According to 9to5Mac, Russia’s communications regulator, Roskomnadzor, blocked FaceTime within the country last week, using terrorism as the official justification without providing evidence. The surprising part is that iMessage, which also uses end-to-end encryption, was not banned. One theory is that iMessage usage in Russia is very low, but a new explanation has emerged from a discussion sparked by Apple commentator John Gruber. A Mastodon user, Magebarf, suggested iMessage traffic is routed through the same endpoint as Apple’s Push Notification service (APNs). This means blocking iMessage could potentially disable all push notifications for iPhones, a catastrophic side effect for any government or carrier.
The Carrier Problem
Here’s the thing. The original intent behind this technical setup probably wasn’t about governments at all. It was about carriers. Back when iMessage launched, it was a direct threat to SMS revenue. Carriers would have loved to block it. But by weaving iMessage into the same infrastructure as push notifications—a feature carriers were already promoting as a key iPhone selling point—Apple basically made it impossible for them to target iMessage without breaking a core phone function. It was a brilliant, defensive business move. You can see evidence of this separation today: on in-flight Wi-Fi, you can pay for a “messaging-only” tier and still get push alerts for apps you can’t use.
An Accidental Shield?
So, did Apple accidentally create a shield against authoritarian regimes? It seems plausible. A government like Russia’s could block a standalone app like FaceTime relatively easily. But crippling a fundamental system service like APNs to get at iMessage? That’s a much bigger step. It would break banking apps, social media alerts, news updates—everything. The immediate backlash would be enormous. Now, it’s not a perfect shield. A determined state could target other parts of the system, like Identity Services. But that’s more complex than a simple block. The simpler explanation is often the right one: making iMessage a pain to block was a happy accident born from a fight with telecom companies.
The Bigger Picture
This is a fascinating look at how platform power works. Apple’s control over both hardware and software lets it create these deeply integrated systems that are incredibly resilient. For users in restrictive countries, it might mean one more channel stays open, which is no small thing. But it also highlights a weird tension. Companies like Apple design features for commercial reasons—outmaneuvering carriers, locking in users—and sometimes those features have unintended societal impacts. Was this foresight? I doubt it. If Apple was thinking about repressive governments, you’d think it would have similarly armored FaceTime. This looks more like a fortunate byproduct of a different battle entirely.
What It Means Going Forward
Don’t expect Apple to publicly confirm this theory. They’ll stick to talking about privacy and security, pointing to their security guides. But for other tech giants, it’s a lesson in infrastructure design. The deeper a service is baked into the core operation of a device or operating system, the harder it is to surgically remove. For enterprises and developers relying on push notifications, this is a reminder of how dependent they are on Apple’s central services—a single point of failure, but also, in this strange case, a point of unexpected fortification. It’s a reminder that in tech, architecture is policy.
