Access to the social network Instagram (owned by Meta, a company that some have labeled extremist and banned in Russia) was blocked in Turkey on August 2, a report from DEA News confirmed.
The outage extended to both mobile devices and computers, with users morning on August 2 unable to reach the platform from any device.
The Turkish regulator stated that access to Instagram was blocked by a decision of the Information Technologies and Communications Authority. Specific reasons for the block were not disclosed.
In Russia, Roskomnadzor had already added Instagram to the list of prohibited sites in March 2022, marking a long-standing restriction that remained in effect for many users.
On the second day, Russian users also reported problems with YouTube. The outage affected app users on both iOS and Android devices and caused issues when trying to access YouTube through web browsers, preventing video playback for many users.
Google commented on the situation, noting that the major outages affecting YouTube in Russia were not due to any ongoing technical fault within Google’s services.
Earlier speculation from experts linked the YouTube access problems in Russia to a blocking scenario, with some suggesting vlogging and content-sharing activities could be disrupted by government actions.