Russian Authorities Have Reportedly Banned IPs That Are Owned by Amazon & Google
Twitch is reportedly blocked right now in Russia, according to several streamers with knowledge of the issue. The website being blocked appears to be part of an effort by the Russian government to block certain IPs that are owned by Amazon and Google.
A streamer named “Angry Roleplayer” claimed in a Reddit post that the streaming website was inaccessible for Twitch streamers in Russia.
“Yesterday Russian authorities started blocking Telegram (popular encrypted messenger) and Amazon (and Google) server IP’s country-wide,” he wrote in the Reddit post. “As a result over 20 MILLION ip’s and ip gates were banned which resulted in massive nation-wide blocking and collapse of many services that used amazon and some google-based servers. Unfortunately twitch is also BLOCKED NOW for most Russians including me!”
The streamer said he had to use a virtual private network (VPN) and a messaging program called “Tor” in order to write a message of Twitch’s website.
Team Empire, an eSports organization, also reported problems with using Twitch in Russia, tweeting that “because Russia tries to shut down Telegram and fails, Twitch\Steam\Twitter won’t load properly”.
Another Russia-based streamer also tweeted about not being able to use Twitch in the country.
This IP blocking is apparently part of a censorship effort by the Russian federal organization known as the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (or “Roskomnadzor”). They’ve been trying to ban a popular encrypted messaging app known as “Telegram“. The boss of the federal organization said earlier this week that they were going to block several IP addresses that are owned by Google and Amazon.
Telegram’s CEO, Pavel Durov, called the initiative “political censorship”.