Russian YouTube traffic has taken another hit, with a recent slowdown contributing to a 10% decline. It's time to compare this statistic with the growth experiences of Russian-language channels hosted on non-Russian IP addresses.
As a reminder, VK Video and RuTube still lack fully personalized recommendation algorithms that consider user interests based on their interaction with video content. Instead, there are pseudo-algorithms imitating these features. To create algorithms on par with YouTube, one must first establish a center for analytics on the same level as YouTube, both for authors and the platform itself. Once this is achieved, it's possible to create a unique set of videos for each user based on this analytics.
Currently, when you're watching videos about bicycles, you'd get a video about bicycles. Watching cooking content makes you get recipes. This isn't how it works now. You look at analytics about events happening on the other side of the world, and then you're suggested a breakdown of a new episode of a TV show that you've never watched and may not have even known existed, which is only irritating.