Russian authorities are preparing a “soft” blocking of YouTube
Russia is testing a portal that will filter YouTube content according to military censorship rules. rostelecom invited its employees to test this service pad. The letter was published by the specialized Russian Telegram channel Zatelecom, DEV.ua reports.
YouTube was offered to be viewed through a website specially created by Rostelecom, ytonline.ru, which allows for content filtering. This is similar to a filter test for YouTube censorship.
As recently as Friday, this site was available to all Russian users, and they could watch any video on YouTube through it. Now ytonline(.)ru has been closed – it’s impossible to access it, the browser says: “connection rejected”.
Direct access to YouTube is likely to be blocked, but you will be able to watch videos from it through this Rostelecom portal, which will filter what to show. This can be a compromise scenario between a complete blocking.
“After the political decision is made, it will take about two months to launch such a filter, there are no technical difficulties, and no serious financial costs are required,” the post says.
Most people probably won’t be able to watch YouTube using a VPN. In the last two weeks, Roskomnadzor has stepped up its fight against VPN services, with a wave of failures in their operation since August 7. The agency explained the attempts to block VPNs as a concern for the personal data of Russians.
