YouTube service is no longer working in Russia.
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It slowed down, slowed down, and stopped. Completely. YouTube is no longer working in Russia. Since the morning of August 8, residents of all regions of the country have been complaining en masse about access to the video hosting site. On computers and laptops, the site does not open at all; on mobile devices, it is very slow at best. What is happening? Who did it? So what should we do now?
“WE BLOCKED THEM AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE”
At 9:00 a.m. Moscow time, complaints about YouTube’s inaccessibility began to rise sharply. This is indicated by bug detectors, in particular by Brand Analytics. At the same time, the geography of complaints ranges from Vladivostok to the central regions.
– It seems that the authorities have used all the tools they can. And they are actually trying to destroy YouTube in Russia,” said Eldar Murtazin, chief analyst at Mobile Research Group, in an interview with KP.RU.
Recall that Rostelecom previously explained the slowdown of YouTube by the fact that Google stopped supporting its own servers located in Russia. They say that they are gradually failing. This affects the download speed and playback quality.
The then MP Alexander Khinshtein explained on his Telegram channel that YouTube would be slowed down three times over the next week, this time for legal reasons. Well, now it seems that the authorities have stopped looking for reasons and arguments. And they simply flipped the switch.
– Some time ago Roskomnadzor supplied its equipment to all telecom operators. It is called TSPU – technical means of countering threats. These are black boxes through which all traffic passes. And the operators do not know what is inside. With the help of these boxes, Roskomnadzor can filter access to certain resources: slow it down or limit it altogether, explains Eldar Murtazin.
“WHY CAN’T CARTOONS WORK FOR A CHILD?”
The expert recalls that the daily audience of the video hosting site is 56 million people. That is, every second Russian adult watches a video on YouTube at least once a day. Moreover, the vast majority does not watch opposition videos, but rather ordinary apolitical content.
“People don’t understand why children’s cartoons don’t work during the holidays,” says Murtazin.
One of the authorities’ goals is to divert users’ attention from the “enemy” YouTube to domestic services, which are not accessible to the opposition and which currently have an order of magnitude fewer visitors. Some traffic is already going there. For example, some bloggers download content from YouTube and upload it to RuTube or VK Video.
However, according to Murtazin, the current, rather drastic blocking could cause problems not only for YouTube’s audience, but also for many other sites. People will look for ways to get around the blocks, and at some point Roskomnadzor will have to plug the emerging loopholes. Then the traffic of Russian video hosting sites will start to be partially blocked. This already happened when trying to block Telegram several years ago. Then other services suffered in the process. Users were also unable to access them for some time.
– On the one hand, there is legislation that implies restrictions on access to content that is illegal. These are the correct actions of the state. On the other hand, this leads to the inoperability of the entire service. As a result, people start looking for workarounds and changing the structure and volume of traffic. Which can also lead to “traffic jams” on the main Internet traffic routes (in other words, other services also slow down – Ed.), said Internet Ombudsman Dmitry Marinichev on Komsomolskaya Pravda radio.
In his opinion, fighting YouTube is not the right strategic task. And it seems that the authorities will find some kind of balance in the near future.
QUESTION FROM THE EDGE
The Internet offers solutions to bypass YouTube blocking. Is it worth believing?
– Scammers always use these events for their own purposes. You should definitely not trust any advertising. Most likely, they will try to scam you out of money or personal data,” explains Eldar Murtazin.
Let’s add it ourselves. There is so much video content on the Internet these days that a million lives are not enough to watch it all. And YouTube is just one of the platforms where you can find it. Most Russian bloggers duplicate their videos on home services. Plus, there are online cinemas. After all, torrents and TV channels. Watching cartoons is definitely not a problem now. And you don’t need to bypass any blocking to do this.
