This will most likely be a pretty ambiguous resolution, there are today several media reports that YouTube is "de-facto blocked" or "completely blocked" .

There is apparently still some traffic, however, but it's almost negligible.

For bettors: there are enow news circulating that the govt will slow down mobile version by 30% (PC version is already slowed down) and prepare for a slow shutdown

https://www.reddit.com/r/discordapp/comments/1fz2rvp/discord_has_just_been_blocked_in_russia/

According to google transparency report, traffic to Youtube from Russia has fallen by about 40%:
https://transparencyreport.google.com/traffic/overview?hl=en&fraction_traffic=start:1703980800000;end:1724630399999;product:21;region:RU&lu=fraction_traffic

I'll sprinkle in some other observations, some personal, some less so:
1) I live in Moscow and can barely load the YT home page without a VPN - neither via 4G on mobile nor fiberoptics at home.

2) My less tech-literate relatives are asking me to help with VPNs since they can't watch Youtube (my grandma is super into crazy orthodox sermons and conspiracy videos on YT, so maybe the whole blocking thing is a blessing in disguise)
3) Yandex Browser (top-2 web browser in Russia after google chrome - or maybe even top-1), has launched a feature that offers finding copies of YT videos on other platforms if the YT video isn't loading - https://www.cnews.ru/news/top/2024-08-13_rossijskaya_smekalka_pomogla
4) number of searches about low internet speed has skyrocketed - https://wordstat.yandex.ru/?region=all&view=graph&words=интернет%20тормозит

5) at least two mobile internet providers (MTS and Megafon) have figured out a way to partly block Outline (Shadowsocks). For example, my Outline VPN hosted on AWS works via my home wifi, but doesn't work when I use 4G. here's one of many posts discussing that - https://dtf.ru/flood/2889055-uchastilis-sluchai-blokirovki-trafika-outline-v-rossii - although it's not widely reported yet.

So:
1) I expect further crackdown on both VPN and YT
2) They're gonna boil the frog slowly, but sooner than later they'll either block YT or slow it down so much it will be effectively blocked (90%+ drop from peak traffic, compared to 40% drop now). I expect the media will not get fooled, and report that as a block, so I expect this market to resolve YES either way

@9cda This feels a lot like China back 15 years ago. They use DNS blocking, which VPNs can defeat. Then they block individual VPN configurations, then they DNS block the webpages where you can buy the commercial VPNs. Then they release VPNs that look foreign and you can access, but are actually controlled by the authorities indirectly, so they can see all your traffic that you think is safe.

Looks like they just blocked signal

https://x.com/netblocks/status/1821958552719708455?t=cRNf0EBgqT74A3IeKE1lBA&s=19

Something has got then really rattled huh

@MalachiteEagle Kursk

See also:

Are they blocking it to try and cover up Ukraine's push into Kursk ?

That is one of my theories. They introduced slowdown as a permanent solution, but two days later that happened and they shut down. But I find it likelier to be a technological error.

I know one woman who lives in Moscow, and she says her mobile version of youtube works (with no vpn).

Still works on my pc!

No, they actually covered Kursk in the news. YouTube is very likely being slowed down through DPI rn, as some kind of stupid bluff. I don't think they will have the balls to ban YouTube completely, though.

Whoa! look at this market: https://manifold.markets/Herrpickle/will-russia-ban-usage-of-youtube-in

Some arbitrage situation there is.
Also, much cleaner resolution criteria there.

I have found a recent experiment of Rostelekom to make a filtered version of Youtube. https://archive.ph/Di4rU

If this happens, how will this market resolve?

@AVS

If they launch this site AND block access to the original youtube website, it would be YES.

It kind of is blocked already now: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/thousands-of-youtube-outages-reported-in-russia/ar-AA1orzDc

It needs 7 days to be so for a positive resolution. It is 95% likely a mess up with their slowdown infrastructure, not an intentional decision.

But if they see that nobody protests they might leave it as it is without solving.

https://moscow.newpeople.ru/youtube petition against slowdown and block. 800k

The incopetency does not automatically mean that there is no intent to block.

I did not say "A means no B". I said "A is likelier than B".

The thing that shows me there was likely no intend to block:

Slowdown infrastructure.

It is incredibly stupid to prepare that thing for several years, finally implement it, just for everything to be shut 2 days after, to lose the progress and to gain the unnecessary hate from vatniks.

Slowing down is a more difficult thing than just blocking through roskomnadzor. Why would they go the hard path just to delete the progress? If there was intention, then there was an answer to that question. I do not know such a reason, which could made those steps look coherent. Thus i conclude it is likely an error (or emergency reaction to Kursk to prevent videos with captives).

"Slowdown infrastructure" was there in 2021 already, it is not something new, just google "twitter slowdown in Russia" and you will see hundreds of reports.

Youtube has (or had?) local caching servers, which makes it even easier target for slowdown - just disable the local caching servers, no special infrastructure neeeded, as far as I understand.

Why they were testing specifically the slowdown twice this summer?

I am trying to just make a mödel, where actions are coherent with intentions. If there was an intention to shut down, why they were spending time on testing the other thing?

That shows that instead of blocking they yet decided to slow down youtube trafic by 98%.

I expect that to be their final decision: slow down to being almost unusable by ordinary users, but not breaking business that rely on yt as a cloud.

Full blockade button will be ready, but triggered only when some major events happen.

Ukrainian invasion into Kursk oblasť might have been the "major event" which i was talking about.