voidly
Citizen Lab category·MMED·multimedia

Countries blocking YouTube, Instagram, and video platforms

Live data on which governments and ISPs are restricting video, streaming, and image-sharing platforms.

7
severe-blocking
1
high-blocking
16
countries with data
126
evidence rows
Last updated Apr 26, 2026, 12:21 PM UTC · revalidates every 5 min

Top countries blocking multimedia & video

Ranked by total measured blocking volume in this category.

  • #1
    severe
    100
    14
    youtube.cominstagram.comtumblr.com
  • #2
    severe
    79
    11
    youtube.cominstagram.comtumblr.com
  • #3
    severe
    79
    11
    instagram.comyoutube.comtumblr.com
  • #4
    severe
    71
    10
    youtube.cominstagram.comtumblr.com
  • #5
    severe
    71
    10
    youtube.cominstagram.comtumblr.com
  • #6
    severe
    71
    10
    youtube.cominstagram.comtumblr.com
  • #7
    severe
    71
    10
    youtube.cominstagram.comtumblr.com
  • #8
    high
    57
    8
    youtube.cominstagram.comtumblr.com
  • #9
    medium
    43
    6
    youtube.comtumblr.cominstagram.com
  • #10
    medium
    43
    6
    youtube.comtumblr.cominstagram.com
  • #11
    medium
    43
    6
    youtube.comtumblr.cominstagram.com
  • #12
    medium
    43
    6
    youtube.comtumblr.cominstagram.com
  • #13
    medium
    43
    6
    youtube.comtumblr.cominstagram.com
  • #14
    medium
    29
    4
    youtube.cominstagram.com
  • #15
    medium
    29
    4
    instagram.comyoutube.com
  • #16
    medium
    29
    4
    tumblr.comyoutube.cominstagram.com

How we measure multimedia & video

The MMED category covers video sharing, streaming, podcasts, and image-heavy social platforms. Blocking these is a common middle-ground tactic: it cuts off the most viral political content without the international backlash of blocking news outlets directly.

Voidly correlates network-level measurements (DNS, TCP, TLS, HTTP) from OONI, CensoredPlanet, IODA, and our own probe network. Each blocked domain is mapped to a Citizen Lab test-list category, and the topic API filters those measurements to category MMED.

Scoring: within a topic, a country's score is a percentile against the worst country in the same category — so the top-ranked country always scores 100. This avoids cross-topic distortions. Full methodology →

Example domains in this category: youtube.com, instagram.com, tumblr.com, twitch.tv

Embed this on your site

Drop this iframe into any page (newsroom, advocacy site, dashboard) — it auto-updates.

<iframe
  src="https://voidly.ai/widget/embed?topic=multimedia"
  width="100%"
  height="500"
  frameborder="0"
  title="Voidly censorship: Multimedia & video">
</iframe>

API access

Free, no auth required, JSON, CC BY 4.0. Cached at the CDN; live every 5 minutes.

curl
curl https://api.voidly.ai/data/censorship-index.json?topic=multimedia
JavaScript / TypeScript
const res = await fetch(
  'https://api.voidly.ai/data/censorship-index.json?topic=multimedia'
)
const data = await res.json()
console.log(data.countries[0])
Released under CC BY 4.0 · cite as voidly.ai/topics/multimedia