The Iron Curtain is getting lower: Russian authorities have almost completely blocked YouTube
Putin's dictatorship in Russia is taking on increasingly harsh forms. The Russian authorities see the Internet as a huge threat and block most foreign sites, resources and services. Recently we reported on the blocking of Viber. Meta has long been called an "extremist organisation" in Russia, because of which Instagram and Facebook have been blocked, with the Discord service joining the list.
YouTube's speed in Russia has long been artificially slowed down, and now it has been almost completely stopped.
Here's What We Know
Many users across the country can not access YouTube. Traffic on the video hosting site has dropped by 80%: from 40 points, which was still in the summer, to 8.5 as of December 2024, and continues to decline.
Free VPNs no longer help in accessing YouTube, and without them it won't open at all. The problem is solved only by paid VPN services, which are also not easy to pay for in the conditions of sanctions.
Obviously, official propaganda is less and less trusted in Russia, so the country's authorities are increasingly preventing access to alternative sources of information, and YouTube was probably the main one.
Graph of YouTube traffic in Russia
