Тhe billboard appeared on at least one bus stop in St. Petersburg sometime early on July 29 and was gone less than a day later: an advertisement for VK Video, a video streaming service from Russia’s dominant social media giant, VK.
“Everything just loads so quickly,” the ad quoted a user, nicknamed YouTube2024, as saying in a glowing endorsement of the VK service.
Though the ad appeared to have been placed by VK, it wasn’t entirely clear who was behind it.
But what is entirely clear is the signal it sends: that the authorities are about to make another major move in their efforts to bring Russia’s Internet to heel. It’s part of a long-running effort to mold the “RuNet” into a parallel online universe, in order to shape Russians’ opinions and even routine interactions to official liking.
In the past, the effort has involved installing sophisticated monitoring hardware, squeezing major Internet companies until they’re taken over by pliant owners, and even ordering global tech giants to ensure their servers are accessible to Russian regulators.
Now officials are trying to push Russians off YouTube -- the Google-owned video streaming platform dominates not only in Russia, but around the world -- and onto other homegrown services. Whether it will work is an open question.
The authorities spearheading the effort aren’t hiding their intentions.
“The ‘degradation’ of YouTube is a forced step, directed not against Russian users but against the administration of a foreign resource that still believes it can violate and ignore our legislation with impunity,” Aleksandr Khinshtein, who heads a parliamentary committee on technology, said in a post to Telegram on July 25.
The Foreign Ministry went a step further on July 31, asserting, without evidence, that YouTube “is not a neutral platform; it operates at the political directives of Washington.”
The Moscow-based Microsoft Technology Center was one of the biggest of its kind in the region when it opened in the mid-2000s.
To Regulate The RuNet
For well over a decade, Russia’s main media regulator, Roskomnadzor, and affiliated agencies have tinkered with the underlying infrastructure for the RuNet, testing out an array of tools and methods for controlling what was once a vibrant, uncensored online universe.
As far back as the late 1990s, regulators developed something called the System for Operative Search Activities, or SORM, which involved the mandatory installation of special devices by all Internet service providers. The system allows the country's primary domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, to vacuum up and monitor anything floating around the RuNet.
SORM and related technologies were expanded over subsequent years, with tools like “deep packet inspection” making it easier for the state to thwart various privacy security or encryption measures.
In the mid-2010s, parliament passed a series of laws requiring major Internet companies like Google, Facebook, and Apple to house their servers on Russian territory, making it easier for authorities to control or monitor traffic. Many of the companies ended up pulling out of Russia.
In 2018, Roskomnadzor targeted Telegram, the messaging app that is widely used in Russia and the region. The popularity of the app and its reputation for strong encryption put it in the crosshairs of the intelligence agencies.
But the effort ended up also blocking millions of web addresses -- technically known as Internet Protocols -- housed on cloud computing services provided by Amazon and Google. It disrupted myriad online businesses and services.
In 2019, lawmakers passed more amendments that, among other things, broadened Roskomnadzor's ability to blacklist and block websites and go after tools -- called virtual private networks, or VPNs -- that help people get around blockages and shield a user's identity and location. The effort was dubbed the "sovereign Internet" law.
Officials also set their sights on the largest private companies involved in news, information, e-commerce, and social media.
Yandex, a wildly successful homegrown tech giant once dubbed Russia’s Google, dominated Russia’s market for news and search services. But after the all-out invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the company was pressured to start censoring information about the war, prompting an exodus of top managers and executives.
In early July, Yandex effectively exited Russia completely, spinning off several divisions into a Dutch holding company and leaving the rest of the assets to a group of Russian businessmen.
Other major web companies like VK, Russia's equivalent to Facebook, have been folded into companies controlled by Kremlin-allied tycoons or state-owned companies.
Regulators are also moving toward the creation of a "super app" -- a single application that would be used for a range of online activities such as chatting, paying taxes, searching for romantic partners, and paying traffic fines.
Servers used by Yandex, located in the town of Sasovo, southeast of Moscow (file photo)
What To Do About Google?
One of the thorniest problems for regulators, however, was reining in the Russian operations of the world’s largest tech companies: Google, Apple, Facebook, and similar companies.
Social media usage accounts for approximately 50 percent of all online activity for Russians, according to market researcher MediaScope. Of that usage, YouTube is the dominant platform in terms of time spent and number of Russians using it. Many of the country’s main media companies use it heavily, as do influencers and cultural figures.
The service, which is owned by Google, had already butted heads with lawmakers and regulators after it blocked dozens of accounts belonging to state-aligned performers, as well as some state-funded media outlets. Google also refused to remove thousands of accounts that Roskomnadzor demanded be taken down.
In early July, the pro-Kremlin performer Shaman staged a protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, complaining about his channel being blocked. Shaman, whose real name is Yaroslav Dronov, appeared to have been kicked off YouTube after being sanctioned by the European Union and the United States for his vocal support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Spectators gather before a concert by Shaman to protest what they say is the illegal blocking of the performer's channels on YouTube.
Days later, on July 12, as some YouTube services inside Russia showed signs of a slowdown, Rostelekom, a state-owned telecommunication provider that is one of Russia's largest, blamed Google, saying that it had not kept up service on its “caching servers” -- locally housed servers that allow for quicker uploads and downloads.
“This approach leads to a decline in the quality of the video service, which we are already seeing," Rostelekom told the Interfax news agency.
Two weeks after that, Khinshtein publicly announced that YouTube would be throttled -- a tech term describing the deliberate slowing of a web page or app.
Google did not respond to several e-mails from RFE/RL seeking comment.
“I assumed that the slowdown would be explained by the so-called degrading of cache servers for Google and YouTube,” Sarkis Darbinyan, a legal expert on cyberpolicy at the advocacy group Roskomsvoboda, told Current Time. “Obviously, they are slowly failing.”
Instead, he said, authorities have made clear they’re looking to “slow cook” YouTube: that is, increasingly slow down traffic so that the video quality worsens.
“This, from the Kremlin's point of view, should gradually motivate users to migrate to domestic analogues,” he said. "They will push users to Russian analogues, gradually weaning them off the cool, high-speed, high-quality YouTube that everyone is used to."
'Their Favorite Toy'
Those Russian analogues are VK Video and RuTube, a video player owned by state gas giant Gazprom via its subsidiary, Gazprom Media. The CEO of Gazprom Media, which also owns a controlling stake in VK, is a former head of Roskomnadzor.
Another Russian-built video service, called Platform, debuted in June.
“The Russian Foreign Ministry calls for active participation [by Russians] in the development of RuTube,” the ministry said in its July 31 statement.
Whether any of these streaming services can fully replace YouTube's reach inside Russia is an open question.
The regulator’s move to “throttle” YouTube stems from the legislation that was amended in 2019 and bestowed that capability on Roskomnadzor.
In March 2021, regulators throttled Twitter, now called X, after the company refused to take down posts Roskomnadzor deemed in violation of regulations. It was the "first-ever use of large-scale targeted throttling for censorship purposes," according to a paper by U.S. and Russian academics.
The effort backfired, however, after a large number of Russian sites stopped working. A similar effort took place this past January -- with similar results. Experts later said it was one of the most widespread and far-reaching disruptions the RuNet had ever experienced.
On July 26, when the YouTube throttling first began, Russians across Siberia complained of outages and problems with mobile data services that affected other apps, including Telegram.
Meanwhile, one of Russia’s largest cellular service providers, MTS, has begun warning its subscribers about possible disruptions in YouTube, according to the state-news agency TASS.
"For reasons beyond MTS's control, some subscribers may experience problems with YouTube," TASS quoted an automated message on MTS’s tech help line as saying.
“YouTube has penetrated the lives of Russians so deeply that if it is blocked, a feeling of emptiness may arise, like when a child's favorite toy is taken away,” the Russian online tech site ComNews wrote. “Some people may throw a tantrum, and people deprived of their favorite toy may start a revolution.”