Access to YouTube in Russia is being increasingly throttled as the government intensifies its crackdown on alternative media. The country's censoring efforts come amid the heightened tensions of the Ukraine-Russia war.
The country is pushing its citizens to shift from foreign-based media platforms like YouTube to domestically developed ones such as RuTube, Russia’s YouTube alternative. In August, Russian YouTube users began reporting that videos were not loading properly. By August 3, Russian state media confirmed that YouTube had stopped playing high-resolution videos on most desktop browsers in the country, according to The Washington Post.
Russian journalist and YouTuber Dmitry Kolezev noted a significant drop in Russian viewers, stating, “Channels that are pure entertainment and don’t cover politics report an even higher drop than the political ones.”
“We suppose that politically active viewers use bypassing tools more actively while other viewers are leaving the platform faster,” he explained, adding that his channel experienced a 30 percent drop in Russian users during August, per the Washington Post.
YouTube has been one of the most popular platforms in Russia, with about 80 percent of the population using it monthly. It is the fourth most visited platform in the country, following Google, the Russian search engine Yandex, and WhatsApp.
It remains unclear why the Russian government is just now cracking down on YouTube following a series of bans on various social media platforms. It could be seen as retaliation for Google’s previous moves to block Russian channels on YouTube or its refusal to block independent media activists' channels that criticize the Russian government. This refusal led to Russia fining Google $100 million and forcing its Russian subsidiary to file for bankruptcy in 2022. However, even after moving most of its services out of Russia, YouTube remained operational.
A YouTube spokesperson commented on the situation, stating, “YouTube is a place where independent voices and citizen journalists have found a home and an audience. That’s why we’ve worked hard to keep YouTube available in Russia, while also taking a number of actions to deal with disinformation since the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”
In recent years, Russia has blocked access from Facebook, Google News, the Signal messaging app, and other means of communication and news.
