Google blocked 6,028 YouTube channels linked to Azerbaijani propaganda in 2025, according to the company’s Threat Analysis Group, marking one of its largest state-linked influence investigations of the year. The broader probe has led to the removal of more than 22,000 Azerbaijani channels since 2021. This was reported by Hetq.
The channels published content in Azerbaijani praising the Azerbaijani government while criticizing Armenia and Azerbaijan’s opposition. The figure refers only to Google’s investigation into propaganda activities related to Azerbaijan and does not include YouTube channels removed for violating other platform rules.
Google took particularly aggressive action in 2024, when it suspended 14,000 Azerbaijani propaganda channels on YouTube. In 2025, that number fell to 6,028. Although the total was significantly lower than the year before, Google’s Threat Analysis Group continued to focus on content targeting Armenia while promoting the Azerbaijani government.
The Threat Analysis Group’s 2025 reports show that channels targeting Armenia were blocked every month of the year, sometimes in the thousands and sometimes in much smaller numbers.
These channels published videos in Azerbaijani, praised the Azerbaijani government, and targeted both Armenia and Azerbaijan’s opposition. Unlike Russian propaganda networks, which operated across multiple languages and themes, the Azerbaijani channels were concentrated in a single language, Azerbaijani.
Notably, Google’s investigations into Azerbaijani and Russian propaganda on YouTube remained among the Threat Analysis Group’s largest in 2025. That year, Google blocked the most channels linked to China, more than 45,000, followed by 14,000 Russian channels. The Azerbaijani operation ranked third, with roughly 6,000 channels blocked.
Armenia also appeared in several Russian propaganda investigations. While in previous years only one case involving the dissemination of pro-Russian content in Armenian had been recorded, since July 2025 Russian influence operations involving Armenia-related content, or content disseminated in Armenian, have also come under study. In total, 212 channels supporting Russia, and in many cases criticizing Armenia, were blocked. That accounted for just 1.5% of the channels removed as part of the Russian propaganda investigation.
The impact of the blocked propaganda channels remains difficult to assess. Google’s reports do not indicate how many videos were published across the channels, how many views they received, or where those views came from.
