In Putin’s Russia, YouTube watches you
Russia endured a brief YouTube outage on Wednesday, which would hardly make news had the outage not been caused by a government cock-up, AFP reports.
Authorities mistakenly included YouTube on a list of banned addresses and officials were quick to point out that it was all an innocent mistake. Luckily, we are no longer talking about Soviet Russia and authorities have a pretty good reason for censorship this time around.
Apparently YouTube got on the list because the original intention was to ban 22 specific videos containing instructions on how to commit suicide. The ministry of communications described the incident as a “technical mistake.”
Some Russians are still concerned by new legislation which introduced the blacklist, but with 21 suicides per 100,000 people per year, it is understandable that authorities are trying to crack down on such content.
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Peter Scott
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