Russian internet providers have begun implementing workarounds to speed up the video-streaming platform YouTube amid what appears to be a government effort to throttle the platform’s speeds, business daily Kommersant reported on Wednesday, citing industry sources.
The move comes nearly a month after Russian online users began experiencing steep drops in YouTube loading speeds. These outages came at the same time that Russia’s state-run telecommunications giant warned that “technical issues” caused by Google removing its equipment from Russia were leading to the slowdowns.
At the same time, Russia’s state media regulator Roskomnadzor called on Google CEO Sundar Pichai to reinstate more than 200 YouTube channels belonging to pro-government Russian media, officials and other public figures.
However, in the absence of an official statement from the Russian Federal Communications Regulatory Service about the YouTube slowdown, telecommunications companies have begun to introduce tools to make it easier for their customers to access the website.
A telecommunications industry source cited by Kommersant said dozens of internet providers already have systems in place to get around the apparent speed throttling, while another source reported that user traffic is being rerouted from Google’s Russian servers to those in Europe.
“We have not seen any violations of the rules,” said Oleg Grishchenko, chairman of the telecommunications association Rosteleset, which represents more than 200 regional providers. “There are no official restrictions on YouTube.”
Ekaterina Abasina, a lawyer at Moscow’s First Digital Lawyers’ Association, told Kommersant that telecom operators are responsible for blocking banned websites, but are not responsible for the “poor quality of traffic filtering” through Roscomm’s system.
But Abasina warned that such workarounds could expose providers to other legal risks: “Manipulating traffic could violate the provisions of the Administrative Law governing the operation of the TSPU. [technical means of countering threats]”This could result in the license being revoked,” she told Kommersant.
Since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, Russian authorities have accused YouTube and Google of spreading “terrorist” anti-war content, sparking speculation that video streaming sites may be blocked entirely.