Roskomnadzor today published demands against Google and its YouTube video hosting. The agency states that YouTube “allows the spread of threats against citizens of the Russian Federation” and “demonstrates an anti-Russian position.”
Previously, Google and Meta began pruning their services from Russian state media. For example, both companies blocked YouTube channels and accounts associated with the Russian state agencies RT and Sputnik in the European Union.
“Users of the YouTube video hosting are broadcasting commercials with calls to disable the railway communications of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. The actions of the YouTube administration are of a terrorist nature and threaten the life and health of Russian citizens,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement.
The RKN also mentioned Meta, whose Facebook and Instagram services have already been blocked in Russia: “In recent weeks, American IT companies, in particular Meta Platforms Inc. and Google LLC have taken a clear anti-Russian stance. On the Internet resources belonging to these companies, a targeted campaign has been launched to discredit the Russian Armed Forces, the media, public figures and the state as a whole.”
Today, Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia, said something similar. His speechwriters dashed off a whole article in Telegram about the harmfulness of foreign social networks.
About Meta, it says this: “Russia for the figures who are sitting in California and their mentors in Washington is just another experimental training ground. A kind of reservation in which digital images live. No more. The principle of “one’s own hand is the master” works for everything ????. As a result of their active anti-Russian position, this training ground was filled with “fakes” about our country and its actions in Ukraine.”
About YouTube like this: “We decided to“ cancel ”Russia in everything, throw it out of the Web, indiscriminately cut and shred even its history and culture. Either because of banal Russophobia, or because of the fear of being called to the carpet in the Senate, the FBI and other structures of the American administration. At the same time, they, of course, do not care about the requirements of our legislation. We contacted them more than once with a demand to remove false information or unblock legal and reliable resources. The answer is silence or indistinct muttering. This illegal one-sided game is pretty boring.”
And on March 14, Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Security and Communications, a member of the United Russia faction, Anton Gorelkin, said that YouTube could suffer the same fate as Instagram if it “does not stop being a platform for waging an information war.”
And today (that is, over the past 12 hours, the “signals” have gone one after another), the state news agency RIA Novosti reported, citing an unnamed “source close to Roskomnadzor,” that the RKN could block YouTube on March 18 or next week.
“Most likely, by the end of next week, YouTube will already be blocked. I assume this with a high degree of probability. I know that he should have been blocked that week, but Meta (Instagram blocking) happened, and I’m sure that the blocking was simply postponed so that it wasn’t all at once, ”the interlocutor’s agency quotes.
RIA Novosti, by the way, released not only this news about blocking YouTube, but also this one …
Since the beginning of the military operation in Ukraine, the Russian authorities have already blocked three major foreign social networks – Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
RKN, logically, should have waited at least until Monday, since Google put forward demands on Friday evening. On the other hand, it is possible to start the graceful blocking process without waiting for any response. Moreover, the reaction is already obvious – no one is going to hide information about what is happening in Ukraine. And almost all of it can be regarded by the authorities of the Russian Federation as “anti-Russian”.
Shutting down YouTube will primarily hit Russians, who say they are not interested in politics. They put on cartoons for kids, learn recipes and helpful tips, look for how to make something, or simply subscribe to channels of interest. YouTube also has a lot of “political viewers”, but they make up a clear minority of the total number of video hosting users.
Despite the fact that Russia is not the most populous country in the world, it is in the top 5 in terms of the number of YouTube users. At the beginning of 2022, there were 106 million YouTube users in Russia, that is, almost the entire population of the country, with the exception of very young children, the elderly and the blind.
According to Datareportal, 72.7% of Russians could watch YouTube in 2022, 54.8% of the audience were women, and 45.2% were men.
Simply put, blocking YouTube will affect almost all residents of Russia. In general, as they write now in social networks, “God save the VPN.”
Source: Rosbalt
Tristin is an accomplished author and journalist, known for his in-depth and engaging writing on sports. He currently works as a writer at 247 News Agency, where he has established himself as a respected voice in the sports industry.
