Russia’s state communications regulator announced it was blocking specific IP addresses owned by Amazon and Google, with Twitch reportedly being one of the sites affected by the ban.
This blanket ban affects Twitch affiliated streamers, devs and organizations in Russia who rely on the platform financially.
Posts made to the official Twitch subreddit claim that Internet users cannot access the site at all, citing a 2000: Network Error.
As reported by Polygon, one Twitch affiliate streamer named Angry Roleplayer posted to the subreddit earlier today saying that more than 20 million IP’s and IP gates were banned.
“Russian authorities started blocking Telegram (popular encrypted messenger) and Amazon (and Google) server ip’s country-wide,” he writes. “So i had to use VPN and TOR to write a message on actual twitch website. I have literally no idea how i can stream with twitch in this situation.”
The block reportedly comes as a result of the Russian group Roskomnadzor’s attempts to block Internet users from using Telegram, an encrypted messaging service.
According to Reuters, Roskomnadzor is attempting to shut it down Telegram after the company (Telegram Messenger LLP) “refused to comply with a court order to grant state security services access to users’ encrypted messages.”
Reuters also reported that Telegram’s CEO Pavel Durov thanked companies like Apple, Google and Amazon on his personal Telegram channel for “for not taking part in political censorship,” which may have prompted the block.
Twitch appears to be the only Amazon-owned IP address affected by the ban, as Angry Rolerplayer was able to upload a video to YouTube (a Google-owned IP address) showing the message that appears on his Twitch account while trying to access it in order to stream.