Moscow authorities did not allow local resident Maxim K. to hold a rally against the blocking of YouTube and the slowdown of hosting, reports “Beware, Moscow”.
The event on Sakharov Avenue with up to 30,000 people was planned for August 17. The reason for the refusal that the Muscovite received from the mayor's office on August 7 was the ban on holding public events due to the epidemiological situation and COVID restrictions.
The letter also warned him that “if the said event is held, the organisers and participants may be held liable.”
- Earlier, a rally on the same topic was banned in Chelyabinsk. The application was submitted by activists of the Ural Maoist Union, and in their response, officials referred to the fact that there were no free sites in the city on that day.
- On July 12, Rostelecom Corporation reported a slowdown in YouTube, citing technical problems with Google equipment. A Meduza source suggested that the real cause could have been a hidden slowdown of the service initiated by the authorities. State Duma deputy Alexander Khinshtein subsequently confirmed this version, stating that this was being done to “bring YouTube’s administration to its senses.” In August, users again had problems accessing the service.
- Traffic slowdown is a technology that appeared in the arsenal of Russian authorities after the adoption of the “law on the sovereign internet” in 2019, which obliged providers to install state equipment for traffic analysis and filtering (DPI). In March 2021, RKN began slowing down the social network Twitter, while some RuNet users reported problems accessing other sites, including state ones.