MOSCOW, July 12 The work of the WhatsApp messenger may be slowed down in some regions by decision of the regulator, said Anton Nemkin, a member of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy.
«Slowing down its work is already applied in certain regions when the regulator sees this is a necessity, — this was the case with Dagestan. The slowdown in the work of the foreign messenger was connected with the anti-terrorist activities of the relevant departments,» he said.
Topic However, the deputy noted, no decisions have been made to block WhatsApp in Russia to date.
At the beginning of the week, users of the messenger from Dagestan complained about its poor performance: media files loaded slowly, text messages took a long time to send. Residents of the Krasnodar Territory, Moscow, Rostov and Volgograd regions and Stavropol region also reported similar problems. The head of the Duma Committee on Information Policy, Alexander Khinshtein, noted then that there was no decision to block WhatsApp in Russia, but the messenger, owned by Meta*, has repeatedly violated and continues to violate Russian legislation, for which it is regularly fined.
Today Rostelecom warned of a possible slowdown in the work of video hosting YouTube. The reason is said to be technical problems with Google equipment, which could affect the download speed and quality of video playback for subscribers of all Russian operators.
The Kremlin noted that there are no plans to block access to video hosting, and difficulties in its work are due to the fact that the equipment has not been updated for more than two years, after Google left the Russian market.
* The activities of Meta (social networks Facebook and Instagram) are prohibited in Russia as extremist.