YouTube is facing a major slowdown in Russia amidst rumors of the platform closing down altogether, as a growing effort by the country to isolate its internet from the rest of the world. Coda spoke with Sarkis Darbinyan, the Managing partner of Digital Rights Center and the co-founder of Roskomsvoboda, the first Russian public organization operating in the field of digital rights protection and digital empowerment.Â
Coda: Russian authorities announced last week that YouTube’s performance would be slowed down up to 70%. Today, it is almost inaccessible in Russia without a VPN, and uploading a short video can take hours. What’s happening?
Darbinyan: YouTube is being slowed down across the country. This is done centrally through DPI (Deep Packet Inspection) equipment, via providers. If a provider knows that a user is connecting to a YouTube server, it starts reducing the traffic, the speed drops, and all 4K videos either start buffering or YouTube switches them to low resolution. This contradicts the authorities’ claims that outdated Google servers, which haven’t been updated for two years, are to blame. Server degradation doesn’t happen overnight. Here, we see interference in the traffic by Roskomnadzor (The Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Internet censor).
C: Why are they slowing down YouTube and why now?
D: This has developed gradually. There have been many concerns about YouTube, not political ones related to social protests, but rather technical issues. How to block it? And how to block it without affecting other Google services, which, of course, could turn most Android devices into bricks. It apparently took them some time to figure this out.Â
Currently, the blockage is not complete. YouTube is still the number one video platform in Russia in terms of users. This means that if it were completely blocked, most Russians would access it through VPNs and cross-border channels. This could potentially bring down the entire internet, as the load on cross-border channels would immediately increase when users connect to servers located abroad instead of their provider’s server. Roskomnadzor is currently measuring and observing how the YouTube slowdown affects the load on cross-border channels. If the load increases, the blockages may be relaxed, but if the loads are small, they might push for a 100% blockage.
C: Is the goal to reorient users to Russian networks, like RuTube and VKontakte (the most popular Russian network, controlled by the state)?
D: I think so. What we see is a change in Kremlin’s strategy. Instead of a harsh blockade, like the one that awaited Instagram and Facebook, the task now is to worsen the quality of video to intensify user migration to Russian alternatives. This might work, as not everyone has access to VPN services, which have become significantly limited. Not everyone is ready to use them. If this continues for many months, it will certainly encourage users to gradually move to other platforms.
C: What are the consequences for bloggers moving to Russian YouTube alternatives?
D: The authorities will definitely moderate and censor the content. Some videos might be deleted entirely, or an entire channel might be taken down. By moving to Russian platforms, a blogger becomes entirely dependent on Roskomnadzor and its will, losing control over their content. This will be more severe than dealing with YouTube’s moderation team.
C: Is there a scenario in which they won’t have to move to these platforms?
D: It depends on the resistance from users and content creators. If they say they are not ready to part with YouTube and arm themselves with VPNs, all of Roskomnadzor’s actions will be in vain. But this situation will allow some of the audience to be lured away.
C: Besides VPNs, are there other ways to bypass these blockages?
D: Well, VPNs are, of course, the most robust tool not only for restoring access to information but also for restoring speed. Therefore, a good VPN channel will solve the problem of waiting for a YouTube video to load. Other tools like Tor can also help. I would like to remind you that Roskomnadzor has worked hard over the past six months to significantly narrow the choice of tools available to Russians.
C: Do you think this is a step towards something bigger for Roskomnadzor, in terms of internet blocking and increasing the so-called sovereignty of the internet?
D: Roskomnadzor and Russian censorship have distinctive features that set them apart from other countries, such as China. While it is becoming more like the Chinese model, it is still very different from the models in Iran or Turkmenistan, where the censorship system is even more severe. The key difference is that all allocated IP addresses in the country are conditionally divided into three lists: white, allowed ones, which belong to national state-owned companies; second, gray IP addresses, used by foreigners and foreign companies; and everything else. Everything else goes into the blacklist. With such a model, VPNs do not work at all because almost all addresses, except for the allowed ones, are blocked. However, for such countries, there are tools like Psiphon, which is not quite a VPN but rather a combination of proxy servers and proprietary development, which, in my opinion, is the only one that works under such total censorship conditions.
C: Why hasn’t Russia implemented this yet?
D: Because Russia still has ambitions to trade with the whole world. Russia still sees itself as part of the international economic community. It wants to trade with India, China, Latin America, and Africa, unlike Turkmenistan. Therefore, trade is impossible without the internet. Implementing such a model would significantly limit the possibilities of foreign economic activity for state-owned companies and Russian legal entities.
Sovereign internet is essentially a barrier between Russian cyberspace and the global one. It has gateways that are, in one way or another, controlled by Roskomnadzor. But it is not only about censorship; it is also about active import substitution: replacing services, protocols, and cryptography, which Russian authorities are striving for.
