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The Kremlin will intentionally cause YouTube download speeds to plummet in the country in response to the streaming giant’s purported “anti-Russia policy,” a government official said Thursday.
“By the end of this week, YouTube download speed on desktop computers may drop [by] 40 percent, and by the end of next week [by] 70 percent,” Alexander Khinshtein, chairman of Russia’s parliamentary committee on technology, wrote on Telegram.
The measure will only affect desktop users, Khinshtein said.
Khinshtein said the measure was a response to YouTube’s taking down “channels of our public figures (bloggers, journalists, artists), whose position differs from the Western point of view.”
In 2022, YouTube blocked Kremlin-backed media outlets RT and Sputnik in Europe after the European Union cracked down on Russian disinformation, and terminated the channel of Russia’s lower house of parliament. It has also taken down thousands of pro-Russian channels and videos for violating its content guidelines.
YouTube is owned by American multinational Google, a subsidiary of Alphabet. It is the world’s most popular video-sharing platform and the second-most visited website globally.
Making YouTube run slower is “directed not against Russian users, but against the administration of a foreign resource, which still believes that it can violate and ignore our legislation,” Khinshtein said.
