Russia starts degrading YouTube by slowing it down to 40 and then 70 percent

By the end of the week, YouTube download speed on desktop computers in Russia may drop by 40 percent, and by the end of next week by 70 percent, Alexander Khinshtein, head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications said.

"The degradation of YouTube is a move that the Russian authorities have to take against the administration of the foreign service that still believes that it can violate and ignore Russian legislation," Alexander Khinshtein said.

It was decided to start degrading YouTube in Russia during the summer season as many users use mobile devices on vacation. The degradation of YouTube will not affect them – the move will target desktop computers in the first place, the MP said. At the same time, the YouTube administration will see that the Russian authorities have proceeded to take specific actions.

Russians start complaining

According to Rostelecom, one of the largest telecom operators in Russia, the number of complaints about the quality of YouTube video playback in the country started growing already.

Thus, the quality of YouTube video downloads in high-resolution formats has worsened. This started happening because Google has not been updating equipment that ensures the operation of the Google Global Cache system in Russia since 2022. The equipment is designed to cache and speed up data loading.

"Due to wear and tear, Google's equipment is unable to handle ф significant increase in Internet traffic. Problems with the operation of GGC affect subscribers of all Russian operators,” Rostelecom noted. At the same time, services and sites that promptly take care of their software and traffic capacity operate as before, the press service added.

Traffic continues to grow and require infrastructure expansion, but Google stopped shipping new servers to Russia.

YouTube as Russia's enemy

It is worthy of note that Kremlin's official spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Russian authorities had no intention to block YouTube in Russia. The Russian authorities are aware of problems with Google's equipment that has not been updated for more than two years, he added.

According to deputy chairman State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Oleg Matveychev, YouTube is an anti-Russian service.

"They conduct anti-state activities and act as an information weapon in our country. We can see that almost all Russian media channels on YouTube have been blocked, they continue blocking personal channels too, and all this continues happening. YouTube is not an independent platform, this is an enemy that operates on our territory, and we clearly understand this,” the official said.

According to Matveychev, Russian users should switch to other platforms and create accounts there.