YouTube window: The Russian authorities' limited success in fighting the platform
Did the December slowdown of YouTube in Russia lead to a decline in traffic within its uncensored socio-political segment, which remains the main ‘window’ of influence for the Russian independent public sphere that has relocated beyond Russia's borders?
An analysis of audience dynamics in uncensored YouTube broadcasting indicates that it seemingly grew somewhat in 2024. Additionally, it experienced two significant surges in February-May and August. Event-driven shocks – such as the murder of Alexei Navalny, the terrorist attack at Crocus City Hall, and the incursion of Ukrainian forces into the Kursk region – were the main triggers, causing traffic to increase by 1.5–2 times during these periods.
The first, autumn slowdown of YouTube, conversely, did not lead to a decline in traffic for informational and political resources but may have resulted in the absence of growth. However, the stagnation that followed might also reflect a generally subdued informational landscape and waning interest in news, a trend seen even in censored segments of the Russian media.
Following the second slowdown, traffic between 20 December and 20 January fell by about 10% compared to the same New Year period of 2023/24, whereas it should have shown growth. Compared to the first three weeks of December (before the second phase of the slowdown), the first three weeks of January showed virtually no decline in traffic for channels that maintained their activity (and perhaps benefited from reduced competition in the sector) but a predictable significant drop for those that went on holiday.
A broader conclusion is that the loyal audience of the independent Russian YouTube segment is quite resilient and not very sensitive to technical difficulties. However, the key factor driving its dynamics remains the informational background: in times of event-driven shocks, consumers will 'break through' to uncensored content unless it is completely blocked. During periods of informational cooling, the segment will retain a loyal but stagnating or slightly shrinking core audience.
Falling, but not sinking
The slowdown of YouTube since late December last year has become one of the most discussed news topics directly linked to the fate of the Russian independent public sphere. By this, we mean the collective activities of professional media, bloggers, experts, and public figures who have relocated abroad and operate outside the framework of Russian censorship. At the end of December and during the New Year holidays, a number of experts claimed that the new, second wave of the slowdown had effectively resulted in the platform being blocked in Russia. This was also indicated by Google data. At the same time, leading independent bloggers and media outlets reported no significant decline in their audience.
This topic has sparked sharp debate in recent days, particularly after two publications by the outlet ‘Agency’. However, to understand what happened to this segment over the past month, it makes sense to first examine the broader picture of how uncensored Russian YouTube evolved throughout the year and its relationship with its audience.
In general, after the start of the war, the Russian YouTube audience grew gradually but steadily, according to Mediascope data. In the first half of 2022, it averaged 89.1 million monthly users; in the second half, 91.5 million. This rose to 93.1 million in the first half of 2023, 95.5 million in the second half, and 95.9 million in the first half of 2024. Over three years of war, the platform gained 6.8 million users. VK, by comparison, increased its audience by 10 million during the same period, but it still lagged 5 million behind YouTube until December when Russian authorities escalated their second phase of platform slowdowns, allowing VK to overtake YouTube.
It is believed that YouTube slowdowns began in July. While Google recorded a 45% drop in traffic in early August, Mediascope's estimates showed audience levels in July–August remained stable (95.8 million and 95.4 million, respectively), though growth had clearly stopped in Q2. In September, the audience fell to 92.86 million, then dropped by another million in October, and to 91.17 million in November. In December, YouTube traffic tracked by Google fell again by 45%, while Mediascope reported a 1.5 million drop in audience (to 89.6 million). Thus, while the December decline from the average figures of the first half of the year amounted to 6.6% (a loss of 7 million users), the pace of the decline was far less drastic than the anticipated impact of the slowdowns.
If Russian YouTube overall grew gradually during the war, stagnated in Q2 2024, and began to decline noticeably in September, the trends in its socio-political segment in 2024 unfolded in a much more dramatic and distinct manner.
Streaming, shorts and video: how to measure independent Russian YouTube
To assess the audience dynamics of the independent Russian public sphere on YouTube, we used the YouScore service and a curated sample of 20 channels significant to this segment (the term 'audience' is used loosely here, as the metric represents traffic, given the difficulty of determining how many unique viewers watched content from the overall pool).
The selection was based on socio-political channels with the highest total view counts in 2024, according to YouScore. From the top 40 channels in this ranking, we selected 20 based on subjective assessments of their relevance to this segment and their representativeness (balancing opposition-leaning and relatively apolitical channels, large professional media outlets, and individual bloggers; the full list is included as an appendix). Collectively, these channels accounted for 45% of all views from approximately 150 channels monitored by YouScore annually.
Unlike 'Agency' and other participants in the aforementioned discussion, we consider the key indicators for evaluating audience dynamics to be YouScore’s 'Total number of views across all videos' and 'Total watch time.' The 'Average number of views' metric is less suitable, as it does not account for watch time and is influenced by the number of uploaded videos, which can vary significantly depending on the genre preferences of content creators and their audiences. The 'Total number of views across all videos' metric encompasses three content categories: regular videos, streams, and shorts (super-short video clips). The share of shorts, which ranged from 10% to 25% of the total views over the past year, significantly affects the total number of views (and, by extension, the 'Average number of views per video'). However, shorts, even in large quantities, have little impact on the total monthly watch time, which reflects audience engagement with streams and regular videos. That said, excluding shorts from the analysis would be incorrect. Shorts serve as a gateway to the segment of the independent Russian public sphere for a significant category of users who are not inclined toward lengthy viewing sessions.
Essentially, the two metrics – total views and total watch time – complement each other. Their intersection results in what is known as traffic, measured in person-hours. The dynamics of these metrics over the 13-month period from December 2023 to December 2024 for our sample of 20 representative channels are shown on the graph. The combined 'Engagement Index' is calculated by multiplying watch time by the number of views (divided by 200 for proportionality).
Indices of view count dynamics, watch time dynamics, and traffic index for a sample of 20 channels, December 2023–December 2024
YouScore data, Re: Russia calculations; see Appendix for chart data in tabular format.
Dramas and storms of 2024: ‘watch when necessary’
To better understand the dynamics of audience engagement and its various parameters over the past 13 months, it is helpful to take the metrics of December 2023 as the baseline (value = 1) and track changes relative to this level (data provided in Table 1 below).
As we can see, in January 2024, compared to December 2023, the total number of views increased by 16% (395 million versus 348 million), while watch time decreased by 10%. There was also a reduction in the total duration of videos uploaded by content creators: the share of long streams decreased during the extended holiday period, while the proportion of shorts increased slightly. However, by February, the situation changed dramatically. On 16 February, Alexei Navalny was killed in a polar prison on Putin’s orders. Details of the incident were unknown, and the politician’s body was withheld from his family for a long time. Views in the independent socio-political segment of Russian YouTube, according to our sample, increased 1.8 times, and watch time grew 1.3 times compared to December 2023 (1.6 and 1.4 times, respectively, compared to January).
In early March, the main news revolved around Navalny’s funeral and spontaneous pilgrimages to his grave. Views on YouTube during the first ten days of March amounted to 60% of all views in December 2023. Then, on 22 March, a terrorist attack at the Crocus City Hall in Moscow claimed 137 lives. Total views for the 10-day period from March 21 to March 31 exceeded all views recorded in December 2023. Overall, March views exceeded December 2023 levels by 2.1 times, and watch time by 1.7 times.
Although April and May were not marked by equally dramatic events, the surge in interest in independent socio-political YouTube content receded gradually. In April, views were 1.5 times higher than in December 2023, and in May, they were 25% higher, even as content creators reduced the number and duration of their uploads. In June, view counts returned to January levels, while watch time declined further. July saw the onset of the holiday season: watch time dropped by 20% compared to December 2023, and the duration of uploaded content fell by 15%.
In August, despite Google reporting a dramatic decrease in YouTube traffic, the Ukrainian Armed Forces' incursion into the Kursk region led to another surge in demand for uncensored content: views rose by 1.8 times, and watch time by 1.5 times. However, this information shock was short-lived. The efforts of Russian propaganda to downplay the ‘Kursk incident’ – the seizure of significant territory in the region by Ukrainian forces – seemed to impact the demand for uncensored content even among its usual consumers. By September, the metrics returned to January 2024 levels.
While Mediascope recorded a noticeable decline in YouTube’s audience share from September to November, this trend was not apparent in the uncensored segment. In October, traffic even experienced a slight uptick due to increased watch time. By December, the situation had returned to the levels of January and June, with views exceeding December 2023 levels by 12%, while watch time remained slightly lower.
Table 1. Dynamics metrics for a sample of 20 channels, January-December 2024, December 2023 = 1
If not for the slowdown of YouTube in August and again in December, end-of-year traffic might have been higher, and the August audience surge might have lasted longer. However, we do not observe a significant audience decline associated with the platform’s slowdown, the effects of which were detected by Google starting in August and by Mediascope from September onward. The key factor driving audience dynamics remains the news agenda: people turn to independent content in response to event-driven shocks, while the loyal (opposition-oriented) audience remains resilient and unaffected by technical difficulties arising from the platform’s slowdown.
This dynamic helps explain why Russian authorities began preparing to restrict YouTube traffic in the summer of 2024. The events of spring highlighted its potential during crises and the likelihood that some of the audience drawn in by a crisis would 'stay' on the platform, continuing to consume uncensored content.
Long holidays and general conclusions
Measuring audience dynamics to assess the impact of December's slowdown during the extended New Year holiday period is challenging, as both user and content producer behavior can deviate significantly from the norm. To address this, we compared the dynamics of our sample during the most recent holiday period (20 December– 20 January) to the same period a year earlier. During the 'big' New Year holidays of 2024–2025, the number of views decreased by 11% compared to the previous year, and watch time fell by 8%. This decline partly reflects a reduced share of shorts (from 17% in December 2023 to 11% in December 2024). However, the overall reduction in both metrics appears tangible and significant. This is underscored by the fact that the baseline audience in 2024 (during periods of information neutrality such as January, June, September, and the end of the year) was 7–16% higher than in December 2023. Accordingly, the holiday audience should have grown compared to the previous year rather than declined.
A second approach to evaluating audience dynamics involves closely comparing traffic from the first 22 days of December 2024 (before the December slowdown began) with that of January 2025. The comparison yields the following results: the total number of views decreased by 15% and the total viewing time by 7% (Table 2). At the same time, the dynamics across individual channels in the sample was mixed: one group (eight channels) remained stable or grew, while the other group (nine channels) saw a 10-40% reduction in traffic (we excluded two channels that showed contradictory dynamics and the ‘vDud’ channel, which saw a 1.7x increase in the number of views per video).
In aggregate, within the ‘stable’ segment, views decreased by 3.5% and viewing time by 7%. In the second, ‘holiday’ segment, views declined by almost 30% and watch time by 25%. However, the data suggests that the decline is not primarily due to YouTube’s slowdown but rather differences in how content producers organised their holiday schedules. In the ‘stable’ segment, the number of posted videos increased by 12% and streaming time decreased by 7%, while in the ‘holiday’ segment, the number of videos decreased by 29% and streaming time decreased by 19%. However, it should be noted that this uneven production activity likely led to some redistribution of the loyal audience in favour of active channels.
Table 2. Dynamics of metrics for the sample of 20 channels during the 2024-2025 New Year holidays
Thus, our analysis based on YouScope data allows us to draw the following conclusions. Throughout 2024, the audience of the Russian independent YouTube segment (according to our sample) experienced two dramatic surges – in February-May and August. Meanwhile, the baseline audience (during 'calm periods') grew by 12–16% compared to December 2023 (no earlier 2023 data is available on YouScope). The forced slowdown of the platform in the fall was almost imperceptible in the audience (traffic) metrics of our sample, unless it manifested in the absence of growth. However, the stagnation observed in the second half of 2024 likely resulted from at least a combination of two factors: YouTube's slowdown and 'information cooling,' marked by declining interest in news and socio-political broadcasting, which is also evident in the censored segment of the Russian media landscape.
At the end of December 2024 and during the first three weeks of January 2025 – amid the second phase of the platform slowdown – traffic in the sample dropped by 11% in views and 8% in watch time compared to the same period the previous year, although it theoretically should have been higher (at least in terms of views). This may indicate a loss of part of the audience. Comparing the first three weeks of January to the first three weeks of December (i.e., before the second phase of the slowdown), traffic declined by 15% in views and 7% in watch time. However, this was not a universal decline across all channels; it was concentrated among those who reduced their activity by taking extended holidays (explaining the variability in intuitive assessments of traffic dynamics). At the same time, the remaining active channels may have benefited from reduced competition. If so, they could see a traffic drop in the next period.
The broader conclusion is that the loyal audience of the independent Russian YouTube broadcasting segment is quite resilient and largely unaffected by technical difficulties, as they widely use VPNs. The most significant factor driving dynamics remains the information environment. During event-driven shocks, consumers will 'break through' to access uncensored content, while during periods of information cooling, the segment will retain its loyal, stagnating, or slightly shrinking core audience. This conclusion is likely important for understanding the dynamics of informational demand in the independent segment of the Russian public sphere as a whole, not just its YouTube component.