Russia’s web tracker reported a major outage in the availability of video hosting site YouTube on Thursday, as the Russian government escalated its complaint about the platform.
Russia’s web tracking service, Sboi. rf, said thousands of disruptions had been reported on YouTube in Russia. Users have said that they can only access YouTube through virtual personal networks (VPNs).
“YouTube doesn’t work,” comments an anonymous user on the site.
Reuters journalists in Russia were unable to access YouTube. The online page is still available on some mobile devices.
Google did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday. Russia’s communications watchdog, Roskomnadzor, also did not respond to a request for comment.
YouTube is one of the last major bastions of free speech on the Russian Internet, where the site continues to host content from the Kremlin’s warring parties that has largely been removed from other popular social media sites on RussiaArray.
The site’s download speeds have slowed in recent weeks, so Russian lawmakers have blamed Google, which owns YouTube, and Alphabet, something the company disputes.
Alexander Khinshtein, chairman of a parliamentary policy committee, warned last month that YouTube speeds would drop by up to 70%.
He said the downgrade is “a mandatory step, not aimed at Russian users, but at the management of a foreign resource that still believes it can violate and forget about our law without being punished. “
Khinshtein then explicitly blamed the slowdown on Google’s inability to invest in Russian infrastructure, such as its cache servers, which YouTube rejected.
A YouTube spokesperson said last week that he was aware of reports that other people may simply not be able to access YouTube in Russia. This is not due to technical measures on his part, he added.