Kremlin Chokes YouTube Service, but Russians Find Ways Around It
The New York Times
The Kremlin is trying to cripple YouTube in Russia, internet experts say, pushing some people to state-controlled domestic alternatives. But many Russians have found workarounds.
He blocked Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
He signed a censorship law that led TikTok to disable its functions.
President Vladimir V. Putin has clamped down on free expression in Russia to a degree unseen since the Soviet era. Now he is taking aim at the last Western tech platform barely standing in wartime Russia: YouTube.
Mr. Putin has not formally banned the U.S. video platform that has more than 2.5 billion users worldwide. But the site has angered Russian authorities, who view the site as an uncontrollable gateway to antiwar content. They have also decried YouTube for removing Russian propaganda channels as well as videos by Russian musicians subject to western sanctions.
So last summer Russian users experienced a significant slowing of YouTube, primarily on desktop internet connections. Internet experts have said the sudden and simultaneous drop-offs in traffic could be explained only by deliberate throttling of the service on the part of Russian authorities.
The purposeful slowing of the service spread to a wider swath of the internet, including mobile networks, last month. Millions of Russians trying to access videos have found them too slow to load or too pixelated to watch.
