This is a blatant lie.
Google says it is not involved in the problems with the service in Russia
On August 1, Russian users of YouTube faced massive disruptions in the service's operation, in some cases - up to the point of stopping the video stream. Telecom operators had earlier warned about the wear and tear of Google's equipment. However, Google told Kommersant that the disruptions in Russia "are not the result of any technical problems" on their part. Alexander Khinshtein, the head of the Duma Committee on Information Policy, earlier said the possibility of YouTube slowing down in Russia was a deliberate action by the authorities against "the administration of a foreign resource" that violates Russian law. A technical analysis of the traffic problems may indicate the beginning of the implementation of this plan, experts suggest.
Users of the Google-owned video hosting site YouTube in Russia started to complain about service interruptions starting from midnight on August 1, according to data from the website "Failure Detector" (owned by Brand Analytics). By the evening of the same day, the service "Failure.rf" noted 9.5 thousand complaints about the work of hosting against several dozen per day during the week. The Kommersant correspondent, when using YouTube from a computer, noted that it does not load videos. The technical data of the video player shows that the channel speed of the connection to YouTube was 322 Kbps, while the buffer value (i.e. the length of the pre-loaded piece of video) remained zero. In July, according to measurements under the same conditions, the player buffered at least 50 seconds of 1080p video. At the same time, the channel speed was decreasing: on July 25 it was 8.5 Mbps, on July 30 - 918 Kbps.
Most of the mobile and fixed-line operators interviewed refused to comment (MTS, Tele2, Er-Telecom) or did not answer (Vimpelcom) Kommersant's questions about YouTube. Rostelecom and MegaFon did not respond directly to the question about the reasons for the problems with YouTube, but said that the operators' equipment was working without fail. On July 12, Rostelecom said that YouTube's performance in Russia could deteriorate due to wear and tear on Google's Global Cache (GGC) servers installed in Russia. "Questions about failures in the work of YouTube equipment should be addressed to Google," Rostelecom added on Thursday.
Google responded to Kommersant's question: "We are aware of reports that some people cannot access YouTube in Russia. This is not the result of any technical problems or actions on our part".The deputy noted that he was referring to "the actions of the authorities", but did not explicitly refer to anyone's decision. Mr. Khinshtein stressed that "the 'degradation' of YouTube is a forced step directed not against Russian users, but against the administration of a foreign resource, which still believes it can violate and ignore our legislation with impunity".
Problems with uploading videos on YouTube may be caused by traffic slowdown due to the operation of TSPU equipment (technical means of countering threats; installed on operators' networks under the law "on the sovereign runet"), according to Kommersant's source in the telecom market and a source responsible for the Internet company's network infrastructure.
The slowdown is based on the analysis of SNI (Server Name Indication) information transmitted to the server, explains one of Kommersant's interlocutors. In the process of establishing a secure connection to the server, browsers and applications use SNI to specify which specific Internet resource they want to access. "The speed of access to the YouTube server turns out to be the same as it was a month ago if you change the SNI field in the headers. This behavior cannot be explained by the 'inefficiency' of GGCs or their use or non-use at all," he said. YouTube slowdown does not appear at all Internet providers, "but whether the video slows down on the network of any particular operator does not depend on it," added a source in the telecom market. This, he said, is characteristic of all blocking carried out on the TSPU.
Experts believe that the decrease in the availability of YouTube will not create problems for the mass Russian audience. The majority of Russian-language content is uploaded to VK Video and Rutube, and audience overflow to these platforms is also possible, believes Artur Makhlayuk, business analyst at Fplus IT Holding. The Russian services declined to comment. But the transition of viewers to online cinemas is unlikely to be observed - "the content of platforms overlap minimally," says Alexey Byrdin, general director of the Internet Video Association. But video hosting serves as a valuable promotional platform for streaming services due to reviews and first episodes of series, which they post for promotion purposes, he continues, and "YouTube still gives incomparably larger coverage and number of views than Russian video hosting".
Source.
The fact is that if Google had done that, these anti-DPI tools wouldn't have worked, but they do.
I understand that the OpenWRT community believes that the Russians must suffer under their regime.
That's kind of horrifying to hear, but whatever.
