YouTube audience in Russia has grown to almost 80% of the population

Russians have set a new record for YouTube reach – 78.5% of the country’s residents visit the media hosting service at least once a month, the results of a study by the Mediascope company “Agency” were published .

In January 2022, monthly coverage was 73.3% of the Russian population. Daily coverage has grown since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine from 37.1% to 45.7%, according to Mediascope.

The growing demand for the international video hosting service has forced Russian authorities to demand that the site's administration remove some of the content, test YouTube censorship services, and launch alternative platforms.

Vedomosti sources reported in March that the FSB, the Ministry of Digital Development, and Roskomnadzor had agreed to begin slowing down video hosting traffic in order to motivate users to switch to domestic video platforms.

On July 11, the first complaints about YouTube's slow operation appeared, and on July 12, Rostelecom announced that the failures were caused by problems with equipment owned by Google.

So far, YouTube has only one video hosting service in Russia: VK Video. It is part of VKontakte, whose monthly audience grew from 64.8% in January 2022 to 73.8% in June 2024, according to Mediascope data. VKontakte's daily reach increased from 37.8% to 44.9%.

Since January 2022, according to Mediascope figures, the audience of WhatsApp, the most popular messenger among Russians, has also grown — from 68.7% to 79% of the country's residents. Attempts to jam the work of this service have so far been observed only locally — for example, in Dagestan , after a terrorist attack and against the backdrop of a ban on wearing niqabs. On July 12, Anton Nemkin, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technology and Communications, announced a possible complete blocking of WhatsApp.

To get the main news faster, subscribe to our telegram and twitter .