Russia is steadily moving toward self-isolation and the creation of its own information bubble with an alternative reality. YouTube has become the latest victim of import substitution.
Today, Russian YouTube users have begun to widely report issues accessing the video hosting service. Monitoring services indicate a rapid increase in complaints about YouTube being down. When attempting to access the site, users encounter a message indicating a lack of connection.
Residents in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Ufa, Saratov, Samara, Krasnodar, occupied Crimea, and other regions are experiencing these problems. Some have noted that YouTube does not load when trying to access the site via home internet, while it still works when using mobile data. For now.
Recently, media outlets reported that Russian authorities decided to slow down YouTube in the country. To accomplish this, they instructed providers to reduce access speeds to the platform to 128 Kbps, which is practically unusable. However, it seems that they later opted for a complete block of the American video hosting service instead of merely throttling it.
Russians are complaining and quietly expressing their discontent over the government's decision to block YouTube in Russia:
- “The old-timer moles have broken YouTube. I don't understand why Russians need a government that complicates life.”
- “I hate the Russian government. They've ruined everything they could. Now they've gotten to YouTube.”
- “How am I supposed to learn? Bring back YouTube, bastards!”
- “Totalitarian censorship. Because of which I can't even play a cartoon for my child. Just turn off the internet entirely in the country, you bastards.”
It should be noted that due to the block on YouTube in Russia, the number of views and comments in Russian on some Ukrainian channels may significantly decrease.
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