Today it appears they shut it off completely: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/9/russian-users-report...

Russia seem to be more reliant on TikTok these days https://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesfarrell/2024/05/02/russias.... Make sense since TikTok is owned by their ally.

This flurry of social media ban might signal the start of the end of Putin's regime, with sudzha's fall by Ukraine. Right now Ukraine can seize artillery storage and destroy rail lines anywhere behind the frontline with ease, and Russia seems paralyzed. If they soften any of the frontline to reinforce the interior, that frontline will collapse.

TikTok is a completely different form of content. (Worse)

Youtube has excellent documentaries, movies, news and commentary if you go beyond the default Mr Beast sloppa.

TikTok is focusing on longer videos these days via allowing the video length to be longer, because short videos are a money sink. Meta realized this already as well, as Mark mentioned that they're losing 1B a year on short form videos.

Ok. Does not change the facts.

Are things like this on TikTokSloppatoppa?

Justice: What's The Right Thing To Do? Episode 01 "THE MORAL SIDE OF MURDER" from HARVARD UNIVERSITY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBdfcR-8hEY&list=PL30C13C91C...

BBC The Great War - 1of26 - On the Idle Hill of Summer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWJlv8hy0jQ&list=PLucsO-7vMQ...

The World At War 1973 WW2 EP 1 From Bluray: Hitler's New Germany https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-esApmoj2tc&list=PLjcHtVEs8l...

Why are short form videos a money sink but not long form? The cost are the same and you can have higher ad loads with short form

Engagement. Ads in short videos are more likely to be skipped or navigated away from compared to an ad in a longer video when the user is engaged and more likely to stay engaged with that content through the ad.

Your second paragraph evidences how effective US censorship has been. YT blocked and deleted RT and other Russian channels including Shaman who is one of the most popular musicians in Russia. Military Summary https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUnc496-PPmFZVKlYxUnToA and Judging Freedom https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDkEYb-TXJVWLvOokshtlsw are still available to fill some knowledge gaps on progress of the war.

This is more complicated than that. First, you have alternative railroads, so while Ukrainians can (and will) make logistics harder, the won't be a big problem (seized munitions and fuel is though). Another issue are power plants.

They do have reserve troups. The main issue is that those cannot be redeployed that fast, the redeployment will show weakness and be costly, at least politically.

Also, they have to move their S400 first (which are easier to move than patriot system to be fair, but will have to be recalibrated). Which is why the Falcons are a huge deal and their arrival probably unlocked the offensive (depending on their payload they could also be useful as more than a threat).

Invidious, Libretube... there are alternatives.

Rutube.

Those are all technological alternatives, but they lack the one thing what this is about: massive amounts of content uncensored by the Russian state.

Invidious it's a proxy for Youtube.

Yes it is. (Almost) everyone knows about it here, trying to bypass it however we can.