This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on March 23rd, 2022.
After Russia classified Facebook and Instagram as “extremists”, YouTube is likely the next target. The popular video service has served as a platform for the few independent journalists left in the country — but it has also been an important tool for Russian disinformation.
August 2021. A different political situation than today, but YouTube still regularly landed in the hot seat over the enforcement of its policies. Susan Wojcicki, CEO of YouTube (part of Alphabet, which also owns Google), wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal. She needed to clarify the company’s stance on these issues. What they could — and could not — imagine doing when politicians knocked on their door with requests.
“The rules governing the internet are regularly being updated, from copyright to elections and political campaigns. YouTube is willing to work together with governments to address these and other issues.”
Wojcicki wrote, before adding in the next paragraph that “companies should have the flexibility to develop responsible ways to handle legal, but potentially harmful content”.
The ambition may have been good, but it didn’t get much clearer.
The quotes illustrate, rather, the fine balance the company has tried to manage for many years. They want individual countries to put laws in place that they can follow, but in certain special cases they still don’t want to follow them. The space in between allows flexibility in policy and opens up an inconsistency that can be exploited to the fullest. And one that has helped make YouTube a success story.
This approach may now have reached the end of the road. At least in Russia.
Last week the Russian military was suspended from YouTube for a week after describing the invasion of Ukraine as a “freedom operation”. This was highlighted in an internal document Bloomberg obtained. To mark its displeasure, the Russian leadership raised the suspension directly with YouTube’s top executives.
The context for the objection is important. On Monday, Meta, which is behind services like Facebook and Instagram, was classified as an “extremist organization”, which essentially means they are criminalized. There is no longer any realistic way for them to operate in Russia. So if Russia’s Ministry of Defense reaches out to YouTube with opinions going forward about how the war is portrayed, it’s not hard to imagine a scenario where they, too, are shut down.
Banning YouTube, however, would be a much bigger and more dramatic move than Meta. YouTube reaches 85 percent of Russian internet users and is therefore the largest social network in the country, and the third-largest site overall after Google and the local search engine Yandex. Facebook faces considerably more competition from domestic — and now state-controlled — services like VK and Odnoklassniki. Shutting down YouTube will therefore be noticed much more, which could be controversial and hard to explain to the population.
Popularity seems to be the main reason YouTube has been allowed to operate relatively freely in Russia until now. Critical videos have often been bombarded with negative comments from the Kremlin, but they haven’t been banned outright.
YouTube has also served as an important tool for distributing propaganda and other Kremlin-friendly information to the outside world. Channels like RT and Sputnik have used YouTube’s global reach to go well beyond Russia’s borders. A 2021 research article showed, for example, that seven percent of Swedes regularly consumed the two Russian channels.
YouTube’s success and its approach in Russia have also opened the door to other voices in society. Russian journalist Irina Shikhman described it as Russians “going to YouTube for the truth — or at least a different perspective”. Shikhman herself has used the service to distribute a video about Russia’s handling of covid-19. If YouTube were to shut down completely, access to this alternative news reporting would be choked off.
The war in Ukraine, however, may have made the Russian authorities think again. And if YouTube is shut out of Russia — one of very few independent sources of information goes with it.