‘No decent alternative’

As the Kremlin cracks down on YouTube, Russians cancel Internet contracts and organize protests

In early August, YouTube playback speeds in Russia began plummeting to near-unusable levels. While the Russian authorities have publicly blamed Google’s supposedly aging infrastructure, independent experts have confirmed that the federal censorship agency, Roskomnadzor, is behind the nationwide throttling. And privately, Russian officials have notified the country’s major telecom operators that YouTube playback speeds are being capped at 128 kbps on many Internet connections. Russians haven’t taken calmly to this. Many are blaming their Internet providers and canceling contracts, while others are organizing protests. Perhaps most surprisingly, even some Russian officials have voiced their dissatisfaction, and one political party has launched a petition urging the authorities to reverse course. Meduza explains the fallout from the first weeks of the Kremlin’s YouTube crackdown.

Since the beginning of August, the Russian authorities have been deliberately throttling YouTube playback speeds across the country. In late July, Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein essentially announced the authorities’ plan, writing that YouTube would soon load up to 40 percent slower on desktop computers, before eventually slowing by as much as 70 percent. Earlier, the state-controlled telecom operator Rostelecom had also warned of potential disruptions to the service, though it attributed them to “technical problems with equipment owned by Google.”

Khinshtein described the measures as a “forced step” against YouTube’s management for allegedly violating Russian law, though he later backpedaled, claiming the slowdown was primarily due to Google failing to maintain its servers in Russia after the February 2022 invasion. Roskomnadzor, the federal censorship agency responsible for the throttling, also tried to place the blame on Google. (Google has denied any technical issues on its end.)

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The first major YouTube outage after these warnings occurred on August 1, with Russian users complaining of problems with video playback on both desktop computers and mobile devices. On August 3, the Russian state news agency TASS reported that high-resolution videos on YouTube videos wouldn’t play on almost all desktop browsers in Russia. Despite these issues, YouTube’s traffic in Russia actually increased to 82.6 million users that week, up from 82.5 million the week prior.

A source in Russia’s telecommunications market told Meduza that the Russian authorities notified all major telecom operators of plans to throttle YouTube’s video playback speed to 128 kbps. The source confirmed that the slowdown was the deliberate work of Roskomnadzor and had nothing to do with Google’s servers. According to the source, the authorities have decided “not to shut down [YouTube] completely for now, but to significantly slow it down.”

On August 8, however, reports began pouring in from across Russia that the streaming service had stopped working entirely, and for the first time, Google recorded a significant drop in YouTube traffic within the country. According to the monitoring website Sboy.rf, there were over 32,000 complaints from Russian users on August 8 (up from more than 14,000 on August 1). On August 10, TASS reported that YouTube’s browser version was working again in Russia, though only for a small portion of users, and that the number of complaints had dropped to around 2,000.

A bridge too far

According to the business daily Kommersant, residents in some Russian regions have started canceling contracts with their service providers because YouTube won’t load properly. Oleg Grishchenko, head of the Rosteleset association, noted that users are finding YouTube doesn’t work on their home network but continues to function normally on mobile devices — leading them to blame their home Internet providers. (The slowdown has mainly impacted desktop computers.) The association has lodged complaints with Russia’s Digital Development Ministry and Roskomnadzor, stating that operators are unable to explain the slowdown to users due to the “lack of official statements in the media and published regulations.”

Meanwhile, there’s been a sharp increase in downloads of apps for alternative streaming services, such as Rutube and VK Video (created as competitors and potential replacements for YouTube), as well as free VPN services for bypassing Roskomnadzor’s blocks. Ads for “YouTube acceleration services” have started popping up on Russian online classifieds, though they’re being flagged and blocked as fraudulent. At the same time, Roskomnadzor has started sending notices to Russian media outlets, demanding they remove any published guides on bypassing the YouTube slowdown and threatening to block them if they don’t comply. Resources for parents on finding alternatives to YouTube Kids for their children have also become popular.

Perhaps most surprisingly, even some Russian officials have spoken out against restricting YouTube. Denis Parfenov, a State Duma deputy from the Communist Party, submitted a request to Roskomnadzor, urging it to stop throttling YouTube. He pointed to survey data showing that most Russians are against restricting the streaming service, and he argued that domestic alternatives to YouTube are unpopular, lack content diversity, and are less user-friendly. In his appeal, Parfenov stated, “Slowing down or blocking the video hosting service primarily affects ordinary citizens who have entirely different interests (educational programs, travel, cooking, sports, etc.) and who do not visit channels spreading dubious information.”

The New People party launched a petition on their website calling on the authorities not to slow down YouTube. “While launching a campaign against YouTube (you can explain it however you like, but in reality, it’s a campaign against YouTube), officials are not offering any alternative,” the party wrote. “There’s nothing pleasant about relying on Western platforms, but there’s no decent alternative right now. Slowing down or blocking YouTube without a proper substitute means depriving hundreds of thousands of people of their jobs, and millions of a space for education and entertainment.” Over one million people have already signed the appeal.

In several Russian cities, people have turned to lawful forms of protest. Requests for permits to hold rallies against the YouTube slowdown have been submitted to the mayor’s offices in Moscow, Chelyabinsk, and Kazan. In Yekaterinburg, flyers opposing YouTube’s blocking have been posted on the streets. However, the authorities in Moscow and Chelyabinsk have already denied organizers permission for the protests — in Moscow, under the pretext of COVID-19 restrictions.