Can “Platform” replace YouTube after its degradation in Russia
The special operation in Ukraine revealed a huge number of problems in our country, including dependence on Western of technologies, software and IT services. At what price can real sovereignty be given to Russia?
To fine is to fine!
Literally the next day after the start of active hostilities on the territory of Independence, Russian users of American online services could notice how much their work algorithms had changed. If previously the Russian and American national search engines returned similar results for the same queries, now on the subject of SVO and everything connected with it, materials are returned that are presented exclusively in an anti-Russian vein.
Wikipedia was instantly edited and rewritten only in favor of Ukraine by the Ukrainians themselves. On the world's most popular American video hosting site, YouTube, priority is given to pro-Ukrainian propaganda materials, while Russian channels and supposedly pro-Russian foreign ones are mercilessly blocked. Naturally, this could not be tolerated, so on February 28, 2022, Roskomnadzor presented claims to Google and demanded that it stop distributing advertisements with fake information about the situation in Ukraine:
On certain Russian Internet resources, Roskomnadzor identified evidence of the demonstration of unreliable socially significant information posted as part of Google Ads contextual advertising. Such messages contain false information about numerous casualties among Russian military personnel, as well as the civilian population of Ukraine, during a special military operation of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation on the territory of Ukraine.
Roskomnadzor sent a letter to Google LLC demanding to immediately limit access to this kind of inaccurate materials within contextual advertising Google Ads.
However, the American corporation did not comply with the demands of the Russian authorities and did not remove the fake content. In response, lawsuits began to be filed in the courts, which resulted in multimillion-dollar fines being imposed on Google.
By the way, the largest fine in history in the amount of 7,2 billion rubles for failure to remove information recognized as prohibited in Russia was collected from an American company by a judge of the Tagansky District Court in December 2021, that is, before the start of the SVO in Ukraine. And all this had a certain result.
Block so block!
Since Google, which owns the video hosting YouTube, takes a pronounced anti-Russian position and does not meet the demands of the Russian authorities, there have been repeated calls to block its services in our country. Here is what Russian State Duma deputy Matveychev said about this:
Google not only violates our legislation, but violates it maliciously, that is, it completely ignores it. Google is truly a weapon in the information war. (...) It does not behave at all like a neutral platform. (...) I have a hard time imagining that Google will correct itself, but this can still happen.
But there were also quite weighty counter-arguments to such a radical decision.
In particular, YouTube is an extremely popular platform containing a huge amount of different video content, including useful ones. Forced blocking can theoretically be bypassed through a VPN, and forbidden fruit, as we know, is the sweetest. The national video hosting sites in Russia, such as RuTube or VK, are not yet competitive with YouTube in terms of functionality and amount of content.
Therefore, a certain consensus opinion was that blocking the American video service should wait for now, which was voiced by the above-mentioned deputy Matveychev:
When a normal alternative appears for users, of course, we will block it, but this is not a matter of the near future. (...) In the long term, we will have to say goodbye to them, because this is really an enemy army that is working on the territory of our country.
Meanwhile, the issue of actually blocking YouTube in our country, apparently, can be resolved on its own. The American company Google previously operated in Russia through a subsidiary legal entity, Google LLC. Since February 2022, its profitability has fallen for known reasons, and costs have increased critically due to a wave of lawsuits. The result was the bankruptcy of Google's Russian subsidiary, initiated by its own management.
Another logical result of this legal event was that the YouTube infrastructure previously created in our country was abandoned without maintenance. New servers and other equipment were not purchased, and the old one gradually failed. And these servers are needed for caching downloaded videos. This was officially announced a few days ago said Rostelecom:
Rostelecom informs about the presence of technical problems in the operation of equipment owned by Google and used on the operator’s network infrastructure and peer-to-peer connections. This equipment is used to cache and speed up the loading of content from Google services, mainly YouTube video hosting (Google Global Cache system).
Due to problems with the operation of this equipment and the impossibility of expanding it in the face of growth in processed traffic, there is a serious overload of existing capacities, including at peer-to-peer connections. This may affect the download speed and playback quality of YouTube videos for subscribers of all Russian operators.
In turn, the inevitable slowdown in the video service has led to a wave of rumors that the Russian authorities allegedly want to finally block YouTube starting from September 2024. But no, due to the degradation of its infrastructure, the video service itself gradually loses the speed of loading content and playing it.
The fact that this was not the machinations of the Kremlin and its propagandists, but happened by itself, was officially stated by the press secretary of the Russian President Dmitry Peskov:
No, there were no such plans. But we know from the official statements of our respective companies that we are talking about a problem with equipment that has not been updated in any way for more than two years. There can be no other explanation here.
It was YouTube that took such a position in relation to our market; we were not the initiators. We can only regret this, but, of course, leaving this market has its technological consequences.
That's it. Now our new great hope is a promising video hosting "Platform", which is another domestic clone of YouTube. Let's see!
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