The average daily audience for RuTube, Russia’s answer to YouTube, more than doubled in the last year, reports Vedomosti on August 6.

Despite the growth, RuTube remains a tenth of the size of YouTube, which is still the most popular video platform in Russia. The Kremlin has set up its own video hosting service that is controlled by Gazprom-Media (GPM), the media arm of the national gas champion.

RuTube’s audience surged by 2.1 times in June amongst Russians over 12 years old compared to the same period in 2023, to reach a total of 4.4mn people, according to Mediascope at the request of Vedomosti.

The increase comes at a time when access to YouTube is being restricted in Russia and speeds dropped by 70% as of the end of July. Russian officials have blamed Google for the problem, saying it has been unable to finance its server infrastructure in Russia due to the sanctions imposed in 2022 in response to Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. However, the restrictions are widely believed to be part of the state policy to “sovereignitise the internet” in Russia and make, what has been dubbed “RuNet”, autonomous from the World Wide Web.

As bne IntelliNews reported, the same policy could be behind a bizarre merger deal between the leading e-commerce platform Wildberries and the much smaller Rus outdoor advertising company. The Kremlin has a penchant to set up pairs of large companies in strategic sectors that it controls directly or indirectly, and after capturing sectors like oil, gas, metals and power, it is finally getting round to controlling the internet as part of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ZAO Kremlin hybrid free market model.

While other major video content platforms such as YouTube and VKontakte also experienced growth, their increase was less pronounced in the last year. According to Mediascope, the average daily audience for YouTube among Russians over 12 years old grew by 9.4% to 55.6mn people in June 2024 compared to June 2023. VKontakte saw a 5% increase in the same period, reaching 54.7mn people.

An important factor driving RuTube’s audience growth was the availability of pirated content from Western media and streaming services that exited Russia in 2022, Maxim Ryabyko, a board member of the Association for the Protection of Copyright on the Internet, and Karen Kazaryan, director of the Institute for Internet Research, told Vedomosti. After the start of the war in Ukraine, several Western media companies, including Universal, Disney, Sony and Netflix, ceased their activities in Russia.

In July 2023, pirated versions of popular Netflix series like "The Witcher," "Black Mirror," and "The Queen's Gambit" appeared on Rutube. The platform reported encountering "an unprecedented amount of pirated content" that would be "immediately removed" upon request from the copyright holder.

Last autumn, pirated versions of films such as "Barbie" (Warner Bros. Pictures) and "Oppenheimer" (Universal Pictures), which were not officially released in Russia, became available on Rutube.

By May this year, RuTube had launched an outdoor advertising campaign in the Moscow Metro featuring characters from "Barbie," "Oppenheimer," and the second part of the "Dune" franchise (Warner Bros. Pictures). Currently, all these titles are available for viewing on RuTube, according to Vedomosti. As of August 5, the pirated version of "Oppenheimer" had garnered 2.2mn views, "Barbie" had 2.3mn views and the second part of "Dune" had reached 2.9mn views.

RuTube’s audience will only get a boost following the problems that viewers have had with streaming YouTube in the last month. On July 25, Alexander Khinshtein, head of the State Duma Committee on Information Technology and Communications, noted on his Telegram channel that YouTube's desktop version download speed was expected to decrease by up to 40% by July 28 and up to 70% by August 4. Khinshtein added that mobile communications would not be affected "for now."

The responsibility for protecting copyright and related rights lies with the copyright holders, and foreign companies that own these movies but have left Russia. They need to send takedown requests to RuTube, without which RuTube is not obliged to remove the content.

In the event of legal action, RuTube would likely be considered an information intermediary, as it does not host content itself but provides technical capabilities to users, Vedomosti reports.