Russia. Authorities crack down on YouTube users

The same Meduza interlocutor informed the portal in July that the slowdown in the service was noticed by users in Russiais the result of actions by Roskomnadzor, the national regulator of the telecommunications market. Officially, the reason given was the wear and tear on Google servers. The speed of 128 kb/s indicated by the authorities, as Meduza points out, is enough to listen to audio recordings or watch videos with a resolution of no more than 240p without disruption. At higher resolutions, users will have greater problems loading recordings. Meduza's interlocutor claims that “for now, the authorities have decided not to shut down (YouTube) completely, but to slow it down significantly.”

Meduza writes that this information is indirectly confirmed by screenshots of notifications published online by the ONS24 provider operating near Moscow, which informed its customers about the slowdown of hosting to “unacceptable speeds” and the possible closure of all Google services in Russia. From a technical point of view, slowing down the YouTube service is possible thanks to special “threat prevention” equipment installed on the providers' networks and controlled by Roskomnadzor. According to Meduza's interlocutor, the problem currently affects mobile internet to a lesser extent. It is not clear what the authorities will do next, but according to the portal's source, “if they (the authorities) want YouTube to simply open and cause pain, then this is the ideal variant.” – In such a situation, we can say: we did not block it, after all it works somehow – added the interlocutor. Russian authorities have long been working on various variants of an alternative to YouTube that would allow for control of content on the internet.