Resultion criteria
This question will resolve positively if, according to at least 3 independent media reports, the entire Youtube website is blocked in Russia for at least 7 consecutive days between market start and December 31, 2024. Otherwise, it will resolve negatively.
Author betting policy
I will bet on this market for calibration purposes.
The 2023 market:
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
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).
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?
It kind of is blocked already now: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/thousands-of-youtube-outages-reported-in-russia/ar-AA1orzDc
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.
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.
https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/internet-a-pc-v-rusku-planuji-zablokovat-youtube-40480021
Could not find it in foreign media, so might be misinterpretation.
https://theins.press/en/politics/265749, and various reporting spurred by it (in russian; too many to list) is the likely source of the current jump.
