Clearly Russia is not happy about the freedom of speech on YouTube and is waving its national security flag as justification for takedowns. A new SurfShark study delivers these stats.
Throughout this decade, Google has received nearly 330,000 content removal requests from courts and government agencies, with an annual average growth rate of 34% since 2020. Starting at over 44,000 requests in 2020, this number surpassed 100,000 by 2023, indicating that the volume of requests has more than doubled.
Requests have been received from nearly 150 different countries or regions. Russia accounts for 64% of the total, with over 211,000 requests (almost 130 per day).
The report links to another study to explain how Russia is so heavily censoring political dissent.
The analysis of which countries contribute most to specific request categories reveals that Russia overwhelmingly dominates both the National Security and Copyright categories, making up 96% and 95% of requests, respectively. This indicates that these two reasons are predominantly specific to Russia. For more details on Russia’s requests, refer to the previously published article section titled “Russia aims to control its digital persona the most.”
What has caused such an extreme increase in Russian requests? Russia has passed multiple laws that help control what’s uploaded online. For example, in 2017, an amendment to Russian law (276-FZ) expanded the government’s scope for requesting URLs that contain content banned in Russia to be removed from Google services. Also, on March 18, 2019, Russia passed a law banning “disrespect” of authorities and spreading content that the government deems “fake news”. These are just a few examples of such laws.
The high volume of Russian takedown requests – averaging 130 per day – reveals a sophisticated approach to digital control. Rather than following China’s model of completely blocking platforms, Russia has adopted a selective censorship strategy that maintains YouTube access while tightly controlling its content.
This creates an unusual paradox: Russia aggressively censors content while keeping the platform accessible, largely because YouTube remains vital for Russian content creators and businesses, while state-affiliated channels use it to reach international audiences. Previous attempts at Russian alternatives like Rutube haven’t gained significant traction, making a complete YouTube ban impractical.
Russia’s approach is particularly effective because it weaponizes both national security and copyright claims, which together account for over 95% of their takedown requests. This dual approach makes it harder for platforms to reject takedown requests, as each copyright claim requires individual evaluation.
Using these two different justifications allows Russia to maintain the appearance of following legitimate content moderation processes while effectively controlling the narrative.
While VPN usage has surged in Russia, particularly after the Ukraine invasion, simply accessing blocked content isn’t the complete solution. Video content is particularly hard to replicate on alternative platforms due to hosting costs and technical requirements. When content is removed from YouTube, it breaks important information networks that took years to build. Russia actively works to block VPN services, creating an ongoing “cat and mouse” game between authorities and users seeking uncensored information.
The 34% annual growth rate in takedown requests since 2020 suggests this digital control is intensifying rather than relaxing. As Russia refines its approach to platform control, the country has effectively created a model of selective censorship that maintains the appearance of open internet access while exerting significant control over the information landscape. This approach might prove more sustainable – and potentially more dangerous – than complete platform bans, as it allows for precise control over specific narratives while avoiding the public backlash that might come from blocking popular services entirely.
However, Russia’s selective takedown strategy creates perfect conditions for a “pollution explosion” on YouTube. The burden of content moderation falls heavily on YouTube’s side – they have to process and evaluate each takedown request individually. This creates an asymmetric warfare situation: it’s much easier and cheaper for people to upload content than for Russia to get it taken down. Even with 130 takedown requests per day, that’s still a tiny fraction of potential uploads.
There’s also a timing advantage for content creators. It takes time for content to be flagged, for Russia to submit formal takedown requests, and for YouTube to evaluate them. During that window, content remains visible and can be viewed by thousands, downloaded and reuploaded elsewhere, mirrored across multiple channels, or edited and recontextualized in ways that make it harder to flag. This explains why Russia maintains access to YouTube despite aggressively censoring it – they know complete blocking would eliminate their ability to use these legal mechanisms for content control.
The real irony is that Russia’s heavy-handed approach with takedown requests might actually be highlighting the very content they’re trying to suppress. When content gets taken down, it often creates a Streisand effect where people become more interested in finding and sharing that content specifically because it was censored.
By keeping YouTube accessible, Russia maintains the legal framework to demand takedowns, but this same framework means they’re stuck playing an endless game of whack-a-mole with content creators who can simply overwhelm the system through volume and speed.
