Just weeks after Russian officials blasted the video-streaming site for what they called anti-Kremlin activity, users in Russia reported extensive outages of YouTube on Thursday.
Within 10 minutes, the web monitoring site Sboi.rf reported getting about 12,000 complaints regarding YouTube.
According to the report, three-quarters of the complaints received by Downdetector, another outage tracking site, were related to YouTube’s desktop edition.
A request for comment from Google—the company that owns YouTube—was not immediately answered.
Comments were also not answered by Roskomnadzor, the Russian government’s overseer over communications.
YouTube is one of the remaining significant bulwarks of free speech on the Russian internet; content created by Kremlin foes remains accessible on the platform despite being mostly deleted from other well-known Russian social media platforms.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, when Russian authorities claimed the Google-owned site of promoting “terrorist” anti-war videos, there has been speculation that YouTube may be blocked in Russia.
Last week, Russian viewers reported a delay in YouTube download rates after officials insisted that Google restore approximately 200 pro-government channels.
A prominent Russian politician warned that YouTube’s loading rates could plummet by up to 70%.
Google denied that the lag was caused by technical faults or its initiatives. However, Russia’s state-owned telecommunications company had previously warned that removing Google’s equipment from the nation would reduce the quality of YouTube video playback.
This is not the result of any technical problems or actions on our part.” – Google replied to this statement in the comment for the Kommersant news outlet.
In addition to YouTube, other Russian websites affected by the interruptions on Thursday included Russian Post, the classifieds website Avito, and the movie streaming service Kinopoisk, according to Sboi.rf.
We earlier reported that Apple has deleted several Virtual Private Network (VPN) apps from the App Store in response to a request from Roskomnadzor, the nation’s government media watchdog, strengthening Russia’s hold on internet censorship.
