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Comment by lalaland1125 | Hacker News Reader

rt.com seems down from my perspective

DDoSes are simple tools, but they can be extremely effective at stopping Russian propaganda mills.

I am not familiar with RT, what "propaganda" were they spreading? I've known of "rt.com" for a while, seeing it posted occasionally, and it never was anything that gave me pause (didn't even known it stood for Russia Today until today).

They're pretty interesting because they have an incentive to be reliable in order for people to trust them. They are also generous with appearance fees so they gets lots of famous Americans on the screen Larry King, Glenn Beck and Ron Paul come to mind. Funny, when googling for examples of Americans appearing on RT a couple of Quora posts came up that may illustrate RT's angle:

> Why does RT (Russia Today) claim that Americans are forced to use unsanitary public laundromats because federal law prohibits hanging clothes on clotheslines to dry?

> The TV show "Russia Today" said the USA is collapsing because of the super rich. Is this true or not true?

It seems to me RT does not necessarily lie to its viewers, it just never skips a chance to make America look bad. Many more examples in the article, "Russia Goes Viral: How the RT network built a US audience":

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2013/09/how-the-rt-network-b...

> they have an incentive to be reliable in order for people to trust them

Classic social engineering trick, gain trust and "cash out" later.

certainly !

Russia Today is a state-owned and controlled media company that directly takes content directions from Russia's government.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rosiegray/how-the-truth... has a good overview of how exactly it works.

Yea it is a sophisticated propaganda operation aimed at western readers. It sometimes even has good reporting but everything is curated to serve the kremlins interests.

> Yea it is a sophisticated propaganda operation aimed at western readers.

Good thing to note, have neve read an article from them and chances are I won't in the future so it will probably not have much direct impact.

RT is a well-known Russian propaganda operation. The fact that your response to it was "it never was anything that gave me pause" is a sign that you did not detect the propaganda and that it may have been working on you.

> is a sign that you did not detect the propaganda and that it may have been working on you

Could be, or not considering I've never read an article from them and couldn't name a single headline (which is why I asked the question)

I always find it interesting how when western countries have state-owned media (like BBC) they're considered normal media networks, but when Russia, or another non-NATO western-aligned country has state-owned media it's "a propaganda operation".

Meh! RT is no different from BBC or Al Jazeera or any other state media. They will have more balanced take on most news compared to any corporate propaganda outlets like CNN or Fox.

The state news agencies are only problematic as sources when they are writing about their own government or immediate enemies... in that they will tend to prefer publishing what their leaders are saying vs what the enemy is saying about them.

Whenever I see RT mentioned, it's always called a "sophisticated propaganda operation" (or something along those lines), and I must say I can't help but physically cringe.

Almost as if every other news network and media company is not a propaganda operation meant to serve interests, and RT is the odd one out.

Yes, more comparably to the BBC. The only one unique enough to have a royal charter to be the state broadcaster in the UK. They will defend the interests of the country that they are operating in.

So the next time a giant scandal about Anonymous's secrets is uncovered or if the BBC airs something that Anonymous doesn't like in the UK, maybe they will run a DDoSing tool against them?

Yesterday they were describing how Ukraine is shelling around Russian schools…

Did that actually happen? It very well could be true even if the framing is inappropriate (Russians could be stationed around schools, for example).

To quote https://twitter.com/DarthPutinKGB

"The purpose of Russia Today is to make sure you have no idea what’s actually happening in Russia today."

I just typed it in on many web browsers, tor, VPNs etc and it turns out that RT.com is still up.

So it’s mission failed successfully?

It was down earlier today for an hour or more.

It appears just to be a leaseweb server.

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