Russia bans Reddit
meduza.io
meduza.io
http://dabase.com/blog/Centralisation_censorship_side_effect...
https://github.com/zapret-info/z-i
The commit with the reddit url:
https://github.com/zapret-info/z-i/commit/3685d96a7e7bce2e3b...
>198.41.208.137 | 198.41.208.138 | 198.41.208.139 | 198.41.208.140 | 198.41.208.141 | 198.41.208.142 | 198.41.208.143 | 198.41.209.136 | 198.41.209.137 | 198.41.209.138 | 198.41.209.139 | 198.41.209.140 | 198.41.209.141 | 198.41.209.142 | 198.41.209.143;www.reddit.com;http://www.reddit.com/r/rudrugs/comments/1derq9/;
The sub itself was created by the same user two years ago and had no activity.
>In Russia, there is a law which allow Roskomnadzor, Russian censorship agency, to block any website without court rulling. Two years ago I tested how RKN react to abuse on popular websites/crazy abuses. On of that websites was Reddit.
>One thing I learned is that RKN doesn't want to block popular websites. They respond me that this content is illegal and they blocked it, but they weren't. It was on 05/21/2013. On 10st Aug 2015 they posted a call to help them contact Reddit administration to official VK page. Funny thing, but they called Psilocybe a plant. Several hours ago they reported that Reddit is blocked in Russia. Seems like things changed.
>How Reddit is blocked? Fully. As Reddit switched to HTTPS, there is no way to block special page.
>Will I remove this post? No. I also think that Reddit administration needs to do nothing. This is important issue on freedom of speech, and only RKN want to violate it.
>BTW, this post is a guide for indoor growing Psilocybe mushrooms in Russian. I'm not sure if any people saw this before blocking, but if you are here and you can read Russian, now you know to grow some shrooms, thanks to RKN.
https://www.reddit.com/r/rudrugs/comments/3grm4d/tfw_you_are...
>403 Forbidden
>Request forbidden by administrative rules.
It doesn't look like official Roskomnadzor's page which is shown for blocked sites.
I'm going to guess this is either totally false, or if they did reach out to reddit, they didn't make it at all clear they were a legitimate Russian government organization.
I tried to contact Reddit administration once - no response. They probably either ignore uninteresting emails (read: any email except where people want to give them money) - or it was labeled as spam and went into the bitbucket.
After the latest reddit drama - this isn't surprising. When you fire someone who handles major publicity without telling anyone (I'm sure people knew and knew why - but didn't want to say anything) - there is definitely a communication problem in your company. And this is not a "sorry we will work for better communication in the future" issue - it's a problem where they need to identify the problem and fix it immediately.
Some times there may be a contact e-mail, but you have to stumble onto it, like after hitting a 500 error page (though often error message contact info is hidden, too).
Other times the e-mail is some internal address that's used for testing, or is non-routable, and the mail goes nowhere. What server is it forwarded to from the public-facing MDA? What mailbox? Is it an alias? A group list? An individual?
Other times, maybe somebody gets the mail, but nobody knows what to do with it. Who checks it? Who figures out where it needs to go? Who replies to it? How do you know if somebody never follows up on it, so that you can re-try to get a reply from someone internal? Does the e-mail seem important enough to even warrant a reply (does anyone care)?
And a lot of the time, even if there's a contact page for the whole site/company, there's no e-mail address, because nobody ever planned for there to be a generic contact e-mail for the whole site or company. How do you reply on behalf of all of Microsoft? Of General Electric? Of Kraft?
Almost always, if a reply does come, it's because someone went above and beyond their normal job duties just to make sure you, the inquiring party, get your question answered.
All these companies have 800 numbers that I can call to get an official-ish reply to my question or concern. It should be just as easy to setup a shared email account for people to respond to.
I listed the problems of shared e-mail accounts above.... My main point is this: it's not about being easy. It's about someone caring enough to go through all the work themselves of getting it set up, because nobody ever requests it get set up. Somebody has to do it all of their own initiative. And often, that initiative gets halted by the chain of command, usually because not answering questions is easier and safer overall.
That's hard to believe when many companies offer a support@company.com, twitter, facebook, phone or other means of public contact.
And why would every visitor contact the owner of the website? Have you ever sent email or wanted to send email to Comcast, Microsoft or any other interesting company? I would imagine only a small number of people would ever contact or even want to contact reddit administration (simply because the subreddits are managed by other people). And I'm sure 90% of those who contact reddit could be replied with pre-typed message of "We have no control of the subreddits - please contact the subreddit moderators".
Personally I couldn't find Twitter's support email. Tried out this page, but all I'm getting is a bunch of contact forms: https://support.twitter.com/forms ; Facebook does this too and here's the thing - they've got an automated system that aggregate issues and bubble up popular ones to their support crew. The long tail of that support queue is most probably completely ignored.
That would require the current admins to actually look at and consider the response. They could have mailed Putin himself as an attachment and it'd still be sitting in a spam folder...
Reddit is typically the target of large scale pro-Russian propaganda shilling/submissions, and, as far as I know, not well-used by Russians. With that in mind, Russia isn't actually that serious about its "war on drugs"-- it's probable that this was just a cover story.
But along those lines, I would expect to see Russia block any other site that relies on user-submitted content. It's really hard to construct a narrative if everyone outside of Russia is saying something different.
http://toinformistoinfluence.com/2014/11/03/russian-propagan...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Chossudovsky#Criticism
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=259_1409830022
(Warning: full foil deflector beanie mode engaged!)
What do I mean by the vast array of oddly similar sock puppets? Just check your Facebook feed. You'll see a bunch of stories from sites with names like (I'm making these up but it would not surprise me if they were real) "organicrevolution.com", "upwithconsciousness.org", "globalspiritawakening.com". These sites carry a mix of conspiracy-tinged political news, "fear porn," and fluffy often new-agey click bait that looks designed to appeal to demographics that are "outside the mainstream." If I were a state propagandist targeting another state, that's who I'd single out to try to influence. (I wouldn't give two shits about their beliefs. We're talking realpolitik here.) These sites have a very stamped out look to them too, often with similar themes and designs and in some cases literally cloned content.
For one actual example, try www.naturalnews.com -- "America's Truth Bureau". It has a million sock puppet clones all over the web spewing sometimes word-for-word-identical stuff. Note the "carrier wave" of new-agey and fear-porn click bait and the undercurrent of propaganda.
I've been on the web since the late 1990s and I've really watched these sites spring up since around 2003-2004. The web's always had a lot of fringe and conspiracy content, but these sites are different. The style is different and the tone is different. Gone are UFOs, Roswell, the paranormal, or the other traditional tropes of www.fringe.com, replaced by what seems a different and more narrowly focused message.
It seemed to get really intense around 2010 when the original pioneers of this style were joined by what seems to be thousands of stamped out sock puppet sites. I'm not exaggerating much. I feel like I can spot links with this 'style' in a second, and the domains are always different with new ones constantly appearing.
The "old fringe" seems totally drowned out and marginalized now. I kind of miss it. It was a vital part of the web ecosystem. Where are my Roswell debris photos? (sniff sniff)
Whether the anti-vaxx and similar stuff is merely to lure a credulous demographic or whether it represents some actual propaganda push for some mysterious reason is interesting to ponder. Psychological warfare is a real subject of study. I can speculate that maybe someone thinks invoking fear and disgust at basic "tier one" things like the food supply and the health care system is a good way to sow deep distrust. And fluoride? Fluoride scare mongering is a thing on these sites! That was John Bircher anti-commie propaganda, so I wonder if someone in the Kremlin thinks it's freaking hilarious to remix it and spew it back at us.
It looks like the kind of web hydra that SEO-oriented content mills might churn out, but why? Who's writing those checks? Content mills and black hat SEO specialists definitely do not work for free. I guess it could be the alt-med industry, but we're talking about a now about ten year old octopus with many sock-covered tentacles. That's expensive. And why the political spin? Foil hats might be reasonable here, especially given the actual connections suggested in the links above.
If only there were actual investigative journalists who investigated things. Sigh.
BTW...
I am in no way implying that we should all become jingo pro-Americans and drop any "counterculture" ideas we might have. I'm just saying people need to not be naive about the fact that there is more than one propaganda apparatus in the world. Something tells me Putin's goal (if it is him) is not to raise global consciousness and usher in the Age of Aquarius. If it's the alt-med industry, their goal is to elevate your spirit by removing weight from your wallet.
How did I not hear about this story?!?
This isn't just fake news. It's a full-blown fake event. They created -- for a period of time -- a real live sort of virtual reality in which something happened that did not happen. Unlike earlier examples of fake history, this was live! A live breaking hoax!
... and of course, we absolutely can't assume that Russia is the only government or other agency doing this. That'd be fairly naive, especially given how easy it is and the potential both for offensive intelligence and profit.
Take that ball and run with it and it gets very, very dystopian. To make something up: what if Fukushima didn't happen? Obviously I'm not actually suggesting this, but as we live more and more in a digitally-informed reality how plausible does faking a world-changing event become? Could we be headed for a world where there will be large percentages of people walking around believing that totally imaginary things are happening? Think about it. What proof do you actually have that Fukushima occurred? Unless you live in Japan, the answer is: "not much."
This isn't new of course, but the Internet could definitely take it to the next level by allowing a much more realistic simulation of a real event to be delivered to a wider audience. Could you actually create a full blown parallel universe and lure a good number of people into it?
We're sort of there already. There are whole weird pockets of people who think all kinds of strange things that are... umm... unlikely. But the scary nightmare fuel here for me is the idea of this being industrialized and well-financed. The potential for mass manipulation is kind of freaky. Now throw specialized AI sock puppets into the mix that can impersonate millions of people discussing the same non-realities and non-events. It's mechanized information warfare -- to old propaganda it's like comparing a machine gun to a musket.
How many years would you say we are away from the first AI-powered industrial scale hoax delivered say... the day of an election? There'd be two choices: let the hoaxers sway the election, or cancel the election and play into their hands in another way.
Also, there's the RT vs Fox dynamic. RT does lots of crazy stuff, from New Age to Tea Party. So sometimes Fox and RT are spreading the same memes. Very strange.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20110222010732/https://www.fbo.g...
Most of the modern Russian internet propaganda is easy to find, and rarely goes deeper than a bathtub. What is interesting is that they are clearly targeting the left and right leaning populations within the US quite differently. The right is targeted with clumsy racial incitement whereas the left is targeted with clumsy "environmentalist" incitement. There is a ton of overlap, but I bet you can hammer out these separate phyla of propaganda targets quite easily.
It's pretty hard to tell how effective these propaganda campaigns are in riling up the target groups because they're mainly pushed by shills. Are the crowds of Putin apologists on Reddit actually Westerners who have come to believe (via propaganda) that Putin really is innocuous, or are they the same three people trying to fabricate a consensus? If I had to put my money on it, I'd say the latter. The propagandists give the public discussion a big shove in the right direction, then it's the useful idiots who believe them that have to carry it into the minds of the public in a durable way.
What we don't see is positive mentions of Russia in day to day real life conversations, meaning that the propaganda has poor staying power, even if it reaches saturation in certain audiences. I'm being a little unfair here since my sample size is only the people I know who are informed (very few), but even the rabble who can't think for themselves aren't singing praises to Putin-- probably because the US propaganda saturation has been much higher for many more years, conferring resistance to certain types of outsider propaganda.
I really like thinking about this stuff.
These are folks who have always been kind of out there and fringe, but this is different and it's a bit disturbing. They've become mean-spirited in an odd kind of way that I've never seen associated with the fringe before (outside of certain conspiracy circles), and have started espousing stuff that sounds slightly to the right of Hitler despite having historically been left of center. The ideology sounds like a cross between radical environmentalism and neo-right eugenics stuff, like Rachel Carson and Julius Evola had a love child that was raised by Steve Sailer. One even started admiring ISIS, claiming that all the stories of their misdeeds are Western propaganda. It's depressing and a bit scary.
Propaganda is real and it works, and anyone can be conned. A lot of 'alt' people pride themselves on their independence. Thinking you can't be conned makes you a better mark.
The problem with the analysis you give is that the goal of the propaganda may not be to inspire pro-Putin or pro-Russia feelings in Americans. The goal may be to make Americans more angry, cynical, irrational, and distrustful of their own government, institutions, and each other.
The race baiting is probably the most dangerous element of the propaganda. I wonder if there's any causal relationship between it and the outbreak of police violence and reciprocal radicalism we're seeing.
On the other hand, how much of the race baiting on the alt news sites is organic? How much of it would still be around if it wasn't the hot topic that everyone is being forced to pay attention to via the media?
Finally, what is the real long term strategic goal of these propaganda campaigns? It's hard to see foreign propaganda ever being successful enough to deliver a geopolitical victory.
I completely agree about there being more than one actor here. I just suspect Russia has a non-trivial role in the phenomenon I mention in my OP. The bottom line is that today's Internet is loaded with bullshit and propaganda and as time goes on seems to become less and less trustworthy as a source of information. That's a big problem.
https://www.reddit.com/r/UkrainianConflict/comments/3gr44w/r...
Either way, in this case I'd bet on incompetence rather than political play.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8401784 — relevant HN submission
Saying "it works for me!" is rarely a very thorough diagnostic.
However there's also a lot of criticism for Meduza, the source reporting this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meduza
"Meduza is run by a team of around 20 journalists who resigned from their jobs at Lenta.ru following Galina Timchenko’s unexpected removal from her post by the website’s owner and Vladimir Putin ally, the oligarch Alexander Mamut"
Reddit works fine for RosTelecom also(the biggest uplink provider in the country).
It's truly worrisome to see repeating of blatant western propaganda stamps involving Putin / Ukrainian conflict / Mh-17 / whatever here in the HN comments instead of factual checks / investigation. Especially considering the fact blatant and usually lying western propaganda(easily accessible in Russia today) is the main reason of pro-western views decay here.
Old tax police, I forgot that they split it between GUEBiPK at MVD and SEB at FSB years ago (and, I guess, more recently SK picked up some of that portfolio). Can't keep track of all the different security organs these days.... Nevertheless, you think I'd have gotten that right, since I just read a piece about Sugrobov and Kolesnikov's prosecution.
Other than that, as I noted in the other comment thread, I wouldn't read too much into this event. Roskomnadzor is a ridiculously stupid organization, I doubt they even knew reddit is a Big Deal in the West.
I wonder how many Russians use Reddit. When Googling for that info, I only found links to /r/russia and news articles about "Russia threatening to block Reddit about Marijuana tips" which obviously predate the blurb in this thread. Does anyone have some statistics?
Is all internet traffic in Russia portal-ed like it is in China?
Imagine the US government trying to block an overseas website, without physically taking the server they would have little ability to do so, there are too many alternate routes.
>many Russian Internet providers (perhaps 30 percent, according to the government) will block the website in its entirety
I'm from the balkans btw.
Edit: Slight correction, Github responds with HTTP 200 and a "banned by your government" stub, lj.rossia.org does the same (shows the 451 code in their message though) and livejournal uses 404 code for the "banned by your government" stub. I figure it's because it's not yet in the http standard or something.
>403 Forbidden
>Request forbidden by administrative rules.
(when trying to open blacklisted url)
Or they will have to find a new site to waste their time on ;)
That definitely smells like they didn't try too hard to get in contact.
Can't ban wordpress!
Sorry, had to be said....
Censoring reddit isn't really significant to be honest.
/r/UkraineConflict and the various LGBT fora are far more likely to have been the real drivers behind the decision. They just don't want to come out and say it.
It's no suprise that they would ban the whole of Reddit rather then let people grow and eat psychedelic mushrooms.
It's just a testament to how dangerous they think this is for their current regime.
Drugs, especially psychedelics, are antidotes for brainwashing and they know it and won't allow it.
I strongly believe that if more people took psychedelics in Russia, the regime would melt away and young people would start inventing crazy cool stuff and organizing Burning Man's instead of listening to state propaganda and preparing for WW3.
Theories aside, I'm really sorry for the people in Russia who are affected by the decisions of these zombie officials and each time I see something like this, I feel a greater need for a decentralized web which would be impossible (or extremely difficult) to block.
(If you're working on something like a decentralized/p2p web/Internet/content distribution platform), let me know, I'd love to join you.
I'm sure not all young people are buying into the official propaganda.
Unfortunately 80%+ approval rating for Putin shows that most of the people, including young ones, are believers in the same state-produced message: fear and caution, revisionism, nationalism, conservationism, etc, etc.
And the subject of WW3 is discussed quite frequently, on talk shows on state tv channels.
Also to be clear I don't mean that no one affected by propaganda. Pretty sure that like 70% of people may actually agree on many things shocking for average european.
Though very few of these brainwashed people will actually go defend Putin regime in case something happen. Likely it's about the same amount of people you may see participate protests in past years.
I don't think Russian soldiers think differently.
Sadly I can't tell the same about other parts of country population because there is huge amount of older people that don't have a job (and have absolutely no way to get one because in Russia nobody need you once you're older than 40) and of course they have nothing else to do than get drunk and watch TV. It's also a lot easier brainwash people that had no life, have no money to live like in US / EU and have no future.
And apparently half of the US populace is high on mushrooms because Donald Trump is being taken seriously as a presidential candidate...
But the biggest difference is that the US government doesn't throw people in jail who disagree with their policies... yet.
You sure about that? Tell that to all the people in jail for non-violent drug offenses. Tell that to Aaron Schwarz. Tell that to Chelsey Manning. Tell that to Edward Snowden (if they ever catch him).
Not really. Those numbers are for the Republican Primary and you better believe they are being pushed up by Democrats. Democrats would love nothing better than for the Republicans to march out Trump as their candidate.
If anyone wants a wager on whether Reddit is accessible through most ISPs in a month, ping me :D