YouTube starts blocking opposition content at the request of Russian authorities - rosmedia

YouTube has blocked three videos on military service evasion by Dozor in Volgograd, School of Conscripts and another independent regional media outlet in Russia. The video hosting service also announced the threat of blocking the OVD-Info channel, which could be the first time an entire channel has been blocked. Prior to this, YouTube did not block opposition content at the request of the Russian authorities. This was reported by a cybersecurity expert who wished to remain anonymous, UNN reports with reference to the Telegram channel "Agentsvo".

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According to a cybersecurity expert, this is a new trend when human rights content is removed at the request of the Russian government, not because of violations of Google's or Western countries' policies.

The four blocking notices reviewed by the Agency state that YouTube received a notification from Roskomnadzor that the channel's materials violate the federal law "On Information." For more detailed information, the hosting administration always suggests looking for it in the Russian register of banned sites.

The videos of all the projects that have faced blocking contain the topic of draft evasion or mobilization, the expert said.

YouTube has blocked the videos "How to hide from the military commissariat (resistance to mobilization: part 3)" (which managed to gain 255 thousand views) and "Evade correctly" (313 thousand views) on the channel "Watch in Volgograd" (29 thousand subscribers), said the creator of the project Yevhen Kochegin. The channel received its first blocking notice in December 2023. At the end of February, YouTube forwarded the request to the NRC. It explained the blocking as a result of posting "information about ways and methods of evading military service when called upon." On March 15, the second video on the channel was blocked. Kochegin said that he would try to challenge the blocking, but did not expect to succeed. On Sunday, the Agency was unable to contact Kochegin.

YouTube blocked the video "Criminal will help you not to serve" (6 thousand views) on the channel "School of Conscripts" (21 thousand subscribers).

In a remote video of an independent regional media outlet, the expert was answering questions about how to avoid being drafted for military service, the Agency's source said.

"OVD-Info received a message from YouTube in early May. In it, the video hosting service reported that it had received a notice from the RKN to block the How Now? channel (99 thousand subscribers). Prior to that, Roskomnadzor reported that it had blocked five OVD-Info resources in Russia, including two of the project's YouTube channels, including How Now? "As far as we know... this is the first case in Russia when the RKN demands to block a channel in its entirety, not a specific video," said Dmytro Anisimov, spokesman for OVD-Info. "We are currently consulting with Google and trying to explain that this demand to block our channel is illegal and is a manifestation of politically motivated censorship. We hope that YouTube will not block our channel, because in this case, it will be lost forever with all subscribers." At the time of publication of the news, the OVD-Info channel was not blocked.

There is no way out of this ban for independent media and human rights projects, says the cybersecurity expert.

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"The Agency notes that the blocking of human rights YouTube channels may mean a change in the video hosting company's position on responding to the demands of the Russian authorities. In 2021, human rights organizations sent requests to Twitter, Meta, and Google in connection with the Russian authorities' demands to block OVD-Info's resources, the cybersecurity expert said. Twitter and Meta responded that they follow not only local laws but also their own moderation policy and the International Convention on Human Rights and will not block OVD-Info's accounts. Google did not respond to the requests, but did not block anything either.