Despite YouTube suspending hundreds of Kremlin-linked channels, Russia has yet to ban the service, some argue because the Kremlin views it as too big to block
Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @mhbergen , @rachaelmyrow , and @samschech See also Mediagazer Tweets: Mark Bergen / @mhbergen : “Some banks are too big to fail, and some apps are too big to be blocked” https://www.wsj.com/... Rachael Myrow / @rachaelmyrow : Months into its war against Ukraine, Moscow continues to let its own citizens access @YouTube leaving a conspicuous hole in its effort to control what Russians see and hear about the conflict. “Some apps are too big to be blocked. https://www.wsj.com/... via @WSJ https://twitter.com/... Sam Schechner / @samschech : We delved into why Russia continues to let its own citizens access YouTube, allowing them access to one of the country's few sources of independent information about the war in Ukraine. w/ @MilesKruppa & @evangershkovich https://www.wsj.com/... See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Moscow's information clampdown has been selective since the invasion began: providers restricted Twitter and Facebook within days, while Meta's refusal to stop fact-checking state media drew a Russian order it ignored. Telegram stayed up too, with experts calling a ban technically hard and politically risky. The pattern in this story is the third instance of the same logic — the Kremlin punishes platforms it can afford to lose and spares the ones it can't.
YouTube sits on the spared side even as it removed 70K+ videos and 9K+ channels covering the war, and even as the Kremlin pushes homegrown rivals like Rutube and VKontakte that local creators have largely declined to adopt. Two years later, YouTube remains the only major US platform still available in Russia and a primary entertainment source — which is precisely why a ban is tricky.
First-order effects
- Russian viewers keep full access to YouTube while hundreds of Kremlin-linked channels are suspended, leaving the Kremlin's propaganda distribution thinner on the one Western platform its citizens still use.
Second-order effects
- The Kremlin's substitution plan — Rutube and VKontakte — keeps underperforming because creators and audiences stay on YouTube, so every month of non-ban deepens the dependency the state says it wants to end.
Third-order effects
- If 'too big to block' holds as a rule, platform scale becomes a shield against national censorship: states that want control must build domestic alternatives before they cut off incumbents, flipping the usual sequence of ban-then-replace.
The trend: Censorship is increasingly constrained by platform scale — states restrict services they can replace and tolerate the ones too embedded in daily life to cut, with YouTube in Russia as the clearest case.