Platform disruptions affecting multiple Google services including the YouTube streaming platform have been detected by the NetBlocks internet observatory on state provider CANTV (AS8048), starting 17:15 UTC (1:15 PM VET) Tuesday 12 February 2019, during the live streaming of a speech by Juan Guaidó marking International Youth Day.

Confirmed: YouTube restricted in #Venezuela from 5:15PM UTC (1:15PM VET) during Juan Guaidó live-streamed speech; Microsoft Bing and Google translation services also affected; incident ongoing #KeepItOnhttps://t.co/FMaBpv9k6r pic.twitter.com/LS8wU7Q2ur — NetBlocks.org (@netblocks) February 12, 2019

The outage follows a similar pattern to those observed during past opposition speeches and rallies as well as critical sessions held by Venezuela’s National Assembly, including the disruption of Google Translate and other Google services, now also extending to affect Microsoft Bing, which provides a popular translation service in addition to its web search functionality.

The present findings are based on 10,000 web probe measurements taken from 40 unique vantage points across Venezuela by the NetBlocks observatory from 15:00PM UTC to 18:30PM UTC.

Update: Network measurements show that the specified restrictions were in place for 90 minutes, lasting from 17:15 UTC to 18:45 UTC (1:15 PM VET to 2:45 PM VET).

Methodology

Internet performance and service reachability are determined via NetBlocks web probe privacy-preserving analytics. Each measurement consists of latency round trip time, outage type and autonomous system number aggregated in real-time to assess service availability and latency in a given country. Network providers and locations enumerated as vantage point pairs. The root cause of a service outage may be additionally corroborated by means of traffic analysis and manual testing as detailed in the report.

NetBlocks is a civil society group working at the intersection of digital rights, cyber-security and internet governance. Independent and non-partisan, NetBlocks strives for an open and inclusive digital future for all.