I’ve heard that YouTube is also blocked now. Instagram was blocked long before that. What about Reddit? How necessary is VPN for Russians now? Which sites are blocked? Btw I’m from China and all websites that you could imagine are blocked, including Reddit.
Reddit works without VPN. Youtube works without VPN, but the speed is cut off. Facebook, Instagram, and X are blocked.
Reddit is not so popular in Russia. Vpn is not needed.
Reddit is not blocked. YouTube works worse than before, but not blocked either.
Not blocked. About YouTube: when people started talking about YouTube slowing down, it was working fine for me. A little later on my computer, YouTube videos started loading very slowly, even at low quality, even VPN didn’t help, but on my phone I could watch them more or less normally at medium quality, although I still had to wait a bit for them to load. However, on Friday the speed returned to normal.
Do u guys need VPN to use Reddit now?
no
Which sites are blocked?
twitter, facebook, instagram, linkedin, ao3, quora, thepiratebay, ficbook
— list is at the top of my head, blocked for various reasons, there’s a whole registry of them. often it’s one page blocked, but as ISPs may not handle such filtering, they block the whole domain.
Here’s a neat unofficial website that tracks all bans https://reestr.rublacklist.net/ The official is basically unusable because it requires captcha after every single request. The unofficial database gets its data elsewhere, but it’s reliable.
You wouldn’t find youtube on that website because what they’re doing is insidious - they slow down google’s cdns (DPI/TSPU drops some amount of request packets), so for some people it simply doesn’t work. You can open the website, but no video is playing. It’s double bad because people who don’t follow any news wouldn’t know it’s not their isp, it’s not youtube, but it’s their government that is the root of the issue.
Reddit works perfectly, i can barely open youtube without goodbyedpi though
Funny thing is on one of our family’s WiFi providers YouTube works perfectly fine, while it doesn’t work at all in my condo without VPN. Reddit works fine.
When I first went to China I barely knew what VPN was and was so surprised to see when Google didn’t work. I don’t know if I can continue living like this, is becoming very annoying, but you guys have had to deal with this bullshit for even longer, and have to find ways around it.
You can use some other tools to circumvent blocking your access to websites. GoodbyeDPI for Windows is a good tool I can recommend.
Reddit isn’t, YouTube requires either a DPI or VPN on some networks (for me it always works on mobile data and always works on my TV, the PC uses a DPI). The only blocked site I can think of is Facebook (not WhatsApp though), but I use that once a year max to setup my oculus quest
You don’t need a VPN to use Reddit. You need a VPN for Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and some other individual sites that aren’t social networks, but you don’t need one for others. YouTube isn’t blocked here, they’ve artificially slowed down its speed. That’s why you can’t watch it via regular Internet, but you can watch it on mobile Internet or via VPN.
Reddit is not officially blocked. I use VPN just in case.
Youtube is not technically blocked, just “slowed down”, usually on landlines and not mobile.
In practice it usually doesn’t work on landlines because of very high packetloss. Offiical versions are different - there are many but all of them says it’s not block, it’s Google because of <different between versions, all of them looks very stupid, some are proven(and those checks can be validated by anybody with technical skills)) false>.
Also, either propaganda does work or there a lot of …let’s say ‘misguided’… people who try to push original versions of reasons what exactly went wrong.
Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/X is blocked because (per official version) terrorist content (they did allow “kill all X” if X=“Russians” in posts,they semi-backtracked as far as I remember).
A lot of anti-govrment/pro-goverment-but-anti-war sites are blocked.
Almost all ua news resources are blocked because of they official stance on SVO (even while they DO oppose official Kiev but have to look at least neutral).
Internet Archive (and some other archive sites like archive.ph) are blocked because they do mirror other blocked things
Flibusta is blocked because copyright
ntc.party is blocked because they discuss “forbidden” things (blocks of all kinds, everywhere)
A lot of pro-LGBT sites are blocked because they are by “extremist LGBT community”(no, I’m NOT joking).
A lot of pro-drugs/violence(real ones) are blocked.
A lot of google infra is blocked.
A lot of public VPN services’s sites are blocked.
A lot of VPNs are blocked (protocol level blocks if they can find way). (VPN themselves are NOT forbidden, as if - you would not be punished if you use it). Not China-level blocks…yet, but people are slowly starting to use China-level VPN tools arleady (XRay,etc)
Reddit now working fine as it is. YouTube is now blocked on cable internet, but works via mobile network.
Reddit was never a problem to visit iirc. Some domestic questions with answers on “first link on the google” websites became all russophobic in 2022, some even completely rewrote articles in ukrainian and banned russian IPs, but is now back mostly to stable or alternatives are the second link.
Youtube was “slowed down” (it depends from nothing changed to completely blocked depending on decency of internet provider), VPN info is hard to find in runet (e.g. habr as one of main techonological sites in Russia just hides VPN-related content from russian IPs), but the VPNs themselves are affordable (so I was said) and easily paid. Personally I just got a KVM and set up my VPN myself, paying it with my russian card, about ~100-200₽ per month.
I wish Reddit was blocked everywhere.
Nevertheless, no, Reddit works. YouTube is throttled, so sometimes it operates fine without VPN, sometimes it works just when powertunel is on
Reddit is ok. YouTube is defacto blocked on PC (via website) and slowly works via applications. Instagram, Facebook, and X are blocked.
Aren’t also a list of approved VPNs? What is the point of censorship if you also approve of VPN’s? Considering that the demographic that would use them are probably more tech savvy than the average user.
Are the networks monitoring for “extremist” activities? Would this have been inspired by Snowden fleeing the USA after leaking classified CIA patriot act information that was intended to filter terrorist activities in the USA?
Probably bordering conspiracy but curious.
nothing is blocked in Russia, it is a free country
Facebook, Instagram and X are all shite anyway, you’re not missing anything.