Shortly after the attack on Ukraine in 2022, Russia blocked Meta’s Facebook and Instagram products. The reason was supposedly “due to extremist activities.” The aggressor state also fined Google and Wikipedia for “incorrect” coverage of the attack on Ukraine. Twitter (X) was also blocked.

This has led to an influx of users onto the platforms, although Russians can still access all Western social networks via VPN.

Now it’s YouTube’s turn.

But in his case, the Russians went the other way; they slowed the site down to 128 kilobits per second. This is only enough to listen to audio or watch video at 240px quality. It won’t work anymore.

What does slowing down YouTube in Russia mean, will it be blocked completely and what will happen to the service next – read in the article 24 Channels.

What happened before YouTube slowed down?

Russia has been moving toward blocking YouTube for several years, starting with the large-scale invasion of Ukraine. In 2022, the head of the Federation Council Information Policy Commission, Oleksiy Pushkov, proposed blocking access to YouTube by decisions of Roskomnadzor and the Prosecutor General’s Office. Later, the Russian Ministry of Digital Affairs rejected plans to block the video service.

But YouTube copies began to appear. In August 2023, employees of the provider Rostelecom received letters with a request to test a duplicate YouTube service called ytonline.ru. It almost completely absorbed the content of the Google service, but there is also the possibility of filtering “undesirable” content for Russians. In September, problems began with accessing YouTube from temporarily occupied Crimea, and this may be a preparation for future blocking.

Hints about blocking YouTube in 2024 have become more specific. Rostelecom has warned about the possibility of malfunctions in Google equipment that could affect the quality of YouTube in Russia. We are talking about the Google Global Cache (GGC) system, which is responsible for caching and loading speed of Google services, primarily YouTube.

On the night of August 1, there was a major disruption in the work of YouTube in Russia. According to Downdetector, the most complained residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg, Moscow and Leningrad regions, Krasnodar region, Novosibirsk region, Rostov-on-Don, Tver, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Vladivostok.

Why is YouTube slowing down in Russia?

On July 25, the head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Oleksandr Khinshtein, announced on his Telegram channel that YouTube will be slowed down to 70% of normal speed. According to him, the “degradation” of the service is a move by the authorities to manage the resource. Therefore, it should be forced to “comply with Russian law.”

““Crackdown” on YouTube is a forced step against the management of a foreign resource, not against Russian usersstill believes that it can violate our laws with impunity and ignore them. It is no coincidence that YouTube chose the summer period for its “awareness-raising” when most people are on vacation and use mobile devices to access the Internet. The disruption of YouTube will not affect them in any way, but the source himself will see with his own eyes that the state has moved from persuasion to concrete steps, Khinstein said.

He added that the slowdown would only apply to the desktop version for now, and threatened YouTube with dire consequences if the company did not change its stance against Russia and its propagandists’ content.

I will emphasize once again: everything that is happening is a consequence of the anti-Russian hosting policy, which constantly deletes the channels of our public figures (bloggers, journalists, artists), whose position differs from the Western point of view. Therefore, the fate of YouTube in Russia depends entirely on it. If the administration of the resource does not change its policy and begins to comply with our laws, nothing good awaits it here. Especially since alternative sites (Rutube, VK Video) are now actively developing,
– wrote a Russian official.

But the next day, Khinshtein changed his position, explaining the service slowdown as simply “Google’s refusal to deal with Russian servers.” However, there has been no official statement yet from Russian ministries or regulators regarding the YouTube restrictions.

Citing a source in the Russian telecommunications market, Meduza wrote that Russian authorities have already informed the largest operators to reduce the speed of uploading videos to YouTube to 128 kilobits per second. The same source said in July that the slowdown on YouTube was not due to alleged malfunctions in Google’s equipment, but rather to the actions of Roskomnadzor.

According to Meduza’s source, Russian authorities decided not to block the service completely. Also, the Telegram channel “Russia Retail and Business” published a screenshot of the internet provider “ONS24”, which talks about slowing down YouTube to “unacceptable speeds” and the possible shutdown of all Google services in Russia.

The source of the publication believes that the slowdown is an attempt to provoke a reaction from Google. The whistleblower is not aware of any other plans for the video service.

Will they continue to decline? If they want YouTube to open up and bring pain, then this is a perfect program. You can say again: “We didn’t block it, but somehow it keeps working.”
– says the source.

What does Google say?

The Google community in Russia says that the slowdown could be due to server crashes, but not to this extent. The slowdown is also attributed to sanctions imposed on Russia due to the war against Ukraine. However, the current problems are due precisely to the actions of the providers.

Currently, YouTube has no legal basis for blocking in Russia. YouTube regularly receives requests from law enforcement agencies to block content. If this content does not violate the YouTube rules, its display and display are prohibited until it is displayed on the territory of the country, which corresponds to Article 15.3 of the Federal Law of July 27, 2006 N 149-FZ (as amended on December 12, 2023) “On Information, Information Technologies and Protection of Information”.
– to stake a claim in the community.

Google says it’s currently working on a way around the Russian block, and is advising users to enable the experimental “QUIC” protocol. To do this, type chrome://flags/#enable-quic into the address bar in Google Chrome and select “Enabled.”