Russia reportedly begins slowing YouTube speeds amid censorship spat with Google

Russian authorities have informed the country's telecom operators that YouTube will be slowed down to 128 kilobytes a second, the independent Russian media outlet Meduza reported on Aug. 6, citing sources.

Widespread YouTube outages have already been reported across Russia starting earlier in August.  

In July, Russian lawmaker Alexander Khinshtein said that Russian authorities would deliberately slow YouTube loading speeds by up to 70% beginning the following week.

Khinshtein, the head of the State Duma's Information Policy Committee, claimed that the move is "not aimed against Russian users, but against the administration of a foreign resource that still believes that it can violate and ignore our legislation with impunity."

According to Meduza's source, YouTube videos will still be accessible without impacting the buffering time if the video remains in 240p or lower.

For now, authorities have decided "not to turn off (YouTube) completely, but to slow it down significantly."

The source also disputed the notion that the slowdown of YouTube videos is related to technical issues with Google servers in Russia.

"It is clear that, for now, this is an attempt to provoke a reaction from Google."

The Russian pro-state outlet Gazeta.ru reported in July that the Russian government plans to block YouTube entirely in September, but Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov denied the supposed plans.  

The move will primarily impact smartphone accessibility, although desktop YouTube usage may also be slowed. YouTube videos can still be accessed at normal speeds by using a VPN.

In April, a Moscow court rejected an appeal from Google's parent company, Alphabet, to remove an almost $50 million fine imposed on the company for its failure to delete information that Russia deems to be discrediting its armed forces and promoting extremist content.

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Organizations belonging to the list are banned from operating in Russia, and it is illegal for individuals or other media outlets to share their content.

The Kyiv IndependentNate Ostiller