Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
reuters.com
reuters.com
However Russia failed to suppress and replicate YouTube that is the only massively popular Western platform in Russia.
I'd say Instagram is as popular. Not sure about other services.
> It worked and most Russians are not on Facebook, twitter and reddit
As a Russian, it's the first time I'm hearing about it. Do you have a source? My impression was that the early local alternatives became more popular because they were better tailored to local realities (better localization, more detailed maps and suggestions etc.), it happened way before the government started slowing down some social networks in the late 2010's. For example, Google search initially failed to account for grammatical declension of Russian, and Yandex beat it by several years (i.e. Google would simply match words as is). Google Docs wasn't aware Ё is a letter and its spellcheck marked all words with it as a spelling error. Or when it tells you the best shop nearby to buy toothpaste is in Oklahoma. There was simply lack of investment in Russian localization because our market wasn't very important to the US. I was one of the early adopters of VK (Facebook's alternative) in 2006 and I remember Facebook wasn't even on my radar (I don't think I heard about it that much), a friend of mine simply sent me a link to VK, I got hooked and invited many more friends of mine. Zuckerberg visited Russia to promote Facebook in 2012 for the first time (the year they finally started a campaign to improve localization for Russia), but it was 6 years late. Youtube's alternative, Rutube, failed because they had nothing new to offer (in fact, I tried to use it, and it was a miserable experience) and Youtube was already widely popular. I honestly don't know why Twitter never took off here, no one uses it and there are no Russian alternatives either. What I want to say is that the local alternatives became popular long before Kremlin's crackdown on the Internet, it happened pretty organically.
Russia has throttled access to Twitter, listing pretty silly reasons, when really it was because they were in a lawsuit over Twitter not removing content they found objectionable. Here's a source for that: https://freedomhouse.org/country/russia/freedom-net/2021
Every person can. That's why sanctions exist: to incentivize a government to focus on its people and isolate a violent government from the world, or conversely, for a people to hold their government accountable.
What would you propose the world do instead of sanctions when diplomacy alone has clearly failed?
Do you think it is easy to stay against government with army? Look at Ukraine, there's the same Russian army there.
The American foreign policy instinct is always for unrelenting brutality.
There's nuance that you're missing (e.g UN not empowered to sanction war crimes by a veto-power state), and your broad interpretation doesn't align with accepted practice.
A relevant analysis: https://www.epw.in/engage/article/do-sanctions-violate-inter...
The UN has had a structure for dealing with veto-power obstructionism since 1950.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_General_Assem...
If the West actually wants to defend Ukraine, it needs to intervene militarily. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't try to placate its conscience with meaningless token gestures.
Governments have changed behavior after sanctions regimes were put in place. The degree and mechanisms of any causal relationship are infinitely debatable, because it's near impossible to falsify them conclusively.
> If the West actually wants to defend Ukraine, it needs to intervene militarily. If it doesn't, then it shouldn't try to placate its conscience with meaningless token gestures.
The government of Ukraine, who is both better positioned to evaluate the value of interventions and whose leaders have quite a bit personally at stake, doesn't seem to have this attitude of “intervene militarily or fuck off”, and has indeed been calling for sanctions and specific enhancements to them.
Besides, Russia knew of all the possible sanctions way in advance, and proceeded to invade anyway - which already tells you how much the government there is worried about them in practice.
Biden is absolutely correct: sanctions couldn't and won't prevent anything. What he's not saying, but what follows directly, is that military force is the only option that'll work.
We want Russia to stop their criminal war on Ukraine. Either by government action, open revolt or a population starving in the streets. The only other option is nuclear holocaust.
The protests gave you martial law and the lost decade, but they also gave you the foundation of what came after: the best performing ex sovbloc country. I'm sure proximity to Germany helped here, a lot of money got dumped into Poland but at the same time Poland worked extremely hard to get where it is today. And without those protests all that might have never happened, or it might have happened much later.
> I also hope for a big change in Russia after some revolution, but it is not that simple under a strict dictatorship.
This is true, and Russia has far bigger problems than Poland had, in spite of being plundered for decades. I'm under no illusion that such a process would be either quick or easy.
Telling others they should endure a decade of pain... Hah, would you do the same, in their position? (I guess the keyboard warriors will say yes...)
This is such a simplistic take, considering a true dictator is in power, who has continually demonstrated a heavy, unforgiving, hand, with any concepts of democracy being laughably false (107% voter turnout!).
Multiple bad things can happen at once. Multiple people can be victims. Nothing is actually black and white.
The Russian people that didn't vote for Putin aren't associated with the army that's attacking right now, in any way, other than randomly being born within the countries borders, where one of the most powerful dictators in the world happens to rule.
But you can.
> Well, we are not able
No, you won't.
That's fine but don't make it seem like there is no choice, there is plenty of evidence of people in Russia protesting and they have made a different choice than you.
And "current operation" is distancing language. It's an invasion or a war, not an operation.
Protests don't even work in the west, how can they work in Russia?
Without Russia propping him up Lukashenko would be out by now.
Think Solidarity, not BLM and get the whole country to grind to a halt. That will make a difference. By the time the police and the army have to decide if they want to open fire on their family it can be won. But for that to happen something major will have to change in Russia first.
Those instances are rare, but that's an existence proof that you can't deny (and there are, historically, more examples).
Note that the support for those Canadian protests amongst ordinary Canadians was minimal.
According to the Russian authorities, yes. According to me: those people are real heroes, right now it is far more dangerous to join such protests than when the numbers are higher, especially in places like Russia.
Of course, I'm not sure there are many parallels here to the situation in Russia/Ukraine.
Accountability for criminal homicide of Black people, especially by law enforcement, has definitely increased since BLM became a force. Whether that's a lasting effect is, of course, too soon to say, but it's not to be casually dismissed as you have.
Especially by law enforcement, or only by law enforcement? Criminal homicide of blacks is way up since BLM.
To be clear, against all war and what is happening in Russia is also equally unacceptable.
Please excuse my ignorance but how did the US and EU put the UA people in danger?
Factually incorrect, the word 'Russia' doesn't appear in NATO's charter, it is first and foremost a security pact. That Russia ends up in the position of the main party to worry about is in principle unrelated to that, but obviously it is the reality, as Russia has proven beyond any doubt now.
> You can google the map and you will see the strategic position of those countries.
Those countries were and are where they always were, and they were happy to join NATO precisely because they feel threatened by Russia, which is not without reason, they were under Russian occupation for decades.
> In the West, only Belarus and Ukraine have not been added to this list of Russian neighboring countries.
You missed Sweden and Finland.
Belarus is a vassal state of Russia, and does not have a functioning democracy. Ukraine has asked to join but this has to date not happened. The fact that it just so happened to be Ukraine that is attacked seems to lend credence to the fact that being a NATO member has its advantages and that those countries made the right decision.
> The USA & EU has been running military drills at those locations for many decades in an act of intimidation.
No, you run military drills to ensure that if and when you ever need them they will work, if you need to figure that stuff out - especially with multiple nations operating together - when you need it then you have already lost.
FWIW Russia does exactly the same thing.
> 2. Sanctions are effecting mostly the everyday people of Russia.
Yes.
> This is gathering more support internally for Putin’s aggression.
You have cause and effect reversed.
> 3. The Ukraine has a major movement toward the west in the last decade.
Which they were entirely free to make. Russia needs to 'stay in its lane'.
> Making Ukraine NATO would be another enemy at the boarder and this would be unfavorable for the Russian’s.
Note that you want to see NATO as 'the enemy'.
> 4. There has been no attempt by the USA to work with Putin or the Russian officials.
The USA is not involved in this conflict. China hasn't attempted to work with Putin or Russian officials either. And FWIW those Russian officials that were worked with were lying through their teeth, which is on the record.
> Even using Russia as a scapegoat for the Wikileaks dump in 2016.
Which has nothing to do with Ukraine.
> And of course so, so much more anti Russian sentiment in our media ahead of this.
'our'?
> 5. Biden and his sons involvement in the Ukraine (as reported on in 2020 by some of the US media) shows the constant strain that the Ukrainians are under.
Not relevant.
> A pawn between the USA and Russia.
In your mind, perhaps, but not in the mind of Europeans or Ukrainians for that matter, who mostly just want to get on with their lives, which a deranged dictator has now made impossible. This confrontation is on Russia and Russia alone, and any kind of attempts to whitewash it or to paint some alternative story is so much bs.
> Open to thoughts and opinions by everyone!
If anything the EU and the US should have done more, not less to arm the Ukraine, but they were under the mistaken impression that that would trigger a Russian response, if they had known then what we know now I'm fairly sure the situation would be completely different. But we're on to it now, and those that still aren't will wake up soon enough.
This is pretty well documented.
Russian people are infested and brain washed with decades of propaganda. I hope this war and sanctions will cripple the country back into 1990s and Russian state cease to exist in its current form, regime, and borders.
Russia is seriously sick and must rid itself from Putin first
Totally understood that not everybody is in a position to make that choice, now or maybe ever. But there is safety in numbers.
https://www.inyourpocket.com/gdansk/the-story-of-solidarity-...
FWIW I was in Poland at the time, the people there were absolutely phenomenal, and the amount of personal hardship and risk endured blew me away. Unstoppable, they would have happily run their country into the ground first. Big difference: they had relatively little left to lose, Poland had been bled dry by the Soviets over decades. By contrast Russians today have far more to lose, or so they may believe, when in fact they probably have more to lose from Putin's continued presence.
A dictator is one thing, an unhinged dictator quite another.
Sanctions are cruel and ineffective.
You know what's cruel? War is cruel.
It is only normal people, most of whom are against war, who will suffer as a result. Doctors who can't source medicine, workers who can't pay their staff, et c.
These sanctions will not negatively affect Putin; he has expected them for years and indeed has been explicitly preparing to cope with them.
Regardless: if Russia doesn't come to its senses quickly the country will likely not recover in the next 40 years or so from the kind of damage they are doing to their stature on the international stage, this is not the kind of thing you walk away from and claim it was 'just Putin'. Time is running out, and the easy solutions have all already been pre-empted by events.
Should cancer patients in Oklahoma not be permitted to buy chemotherapy medications because Bush invaded Iraq?
We banned collective punishment in the Geneva Convention because it is insane and unjust.
I have persian friends with family in Iran who can testify firsthand to how damaging sanctions are to people who have no ability whatsoever to remedy the problems that caused the sanctions to be put in place. Personifying countries is an error.
Yes, and I'm sorry about that. But that is the country that is currently invading another country.
> Should cancer patients in Oklahoma not be permitted to buy chemotherapy medications because Bush invaded Iraq?
I'm out of patience for the day for silly arguments, sorry.
> We banned collective punishment in the Geneva Convention because it is insane and unjust.
That's not what collective punishment is about.
> I have persian friends with family in Iran who can testify firsthand to how damaging sanctions are to people who have no ability whatsoever to remedy the problems that caused the sanctions to be put in place. Personifying countries is an error.
Yes, this is called collateral damage. See also: photos of Ukrainian kids sheltering in the Kiev subway today in fear of the Russian onslaught headed towards their city, if you want to personify this then maybe have a look at those instead of trying to gain sympathy for the citizens of the aggressor nation.
Using techniques that will not affect those who caused the war, while severely punishing those who are not involved in the war (simply because of where they live), will not help the situation, it will make it worse.
I feel bad for people in Russia who don't want that war either, sanctions will hurt.
But:
1. Sanctions are a way to exert pressure and say "don't DO that". They're supposed to hurt. The other effective way to send that message is to use actual force. I'm sure people of Russia would prefer that less.
2. As a kid from Sarajevo, I feel Ukrainan's pain a LOT more today than yours, because they ARE being shelled and bombed and besieged and starved. You are not. Count your lucky stars.
3. As others pointed, there are choices. At this point, mostly shitty choices, all around, for all involved. I for one ran the fuck away from that part of the world. That was a personal, selfish choice (well, in reality, made by my parents, but I sure as heck supported them). Others protest secretly. Others, braver and less selfish and more idealistic, protest loudly. Yet others take up arms. Much as Canadians let alone world like to find things to complain about US (often validly), they did hash these things in a rebellion and a Civil war and again in the violent protests of the 70's... and they seem poised to be hashing them out violently again. Point being, it's not easy ANYwhere to get things even remotely right or fair or just or peaceful. I'm not selfless enough to die fighting a government; but I recognize it is an option and a choice.
So what I'm saying is, today, people of Russia are not at top of my personal priority list of people to feel sorry for. You're not absent from it, but everything is a limited resource. Sorry :-/
At any rate, if we want to engage in a productive discussion, let us enumerate alternatives and rank them. I'll start
* Sanctions * Military Engagement * Assassination * Covert policy, government, elections influence
What other means does the world have to say "please don't do that"? Which are preferred over / should come before sanctions, and why?
I don't mean this to sound antagonistic. I'm tremendously frustrated because I agree sanctions are weak, mis-targeted and won't drive sufficient change fast enough. But while I can rail against them, I don't genuinely know what else is left on the plate. One participant is acting like a violent bully. At that point, once discussion/education/negotiation has failed, there's really no good options for anybody left.
The only effective counter to Russia right now is direct military aid to Ukraine. But the rest of the world has chosen to re-enact 1938 all over again.
The US aid package just announced includes security aid that is a sizable fraction of Ukraine's annual defense spending, on top of preexisting direct security aid. And the US isn't alone. Sanctions aren't the only response.
If however by direct military aid you mean soldiers on the ground fighting Russians, then a) I agree that would be more effective and b) I think it's unlikely to happen because c) if we engage in second order thinking, I don't see how it ends well for anyone in the short term. That's the problem with a Bully, they don't care about their own pain as much as other guys care about theirs. Once they start hitting, there are no great options. All options from here on suck.
Because you'll end up fighting the bully anyway sooner or later. But if it's later, there will be fewer left standing by your side.
The problem is
1. This Bully has nuclear weapons
2. This Bully has historically shown they are willing and able to take more pain for their cause.
As for being willing to take more pain - you're right, that's a big part of the problem for the West. But it needs to understand that, just like in 1938, avoiding the bully only delays the inevitable, and the pain will still come eventually.
Somebody decides that using tactical kiloton Nukes is the way to go and other side would not dare escalate further.
A lot of people think if they do the big fearsome escalation, then the other side will back off. Everything up to this point indicates this is Putin's logic. He may be over committed now - what option other than finishing invasion does he realistically have that preserves any goals or prerogatives? In some ways the rational thing, from his perspective, is to keep escalating until other side acts "rationally" and backs off.
It's all a giant game of chicken, and I am not convinced that all state leaders anywhere let alone everywhere are rational and fearful enough.
I know some went to Kurdistan on their own expense to help hunt down Daesh war criminals and further back I think some well known resistance fighters from second world war had experience from defending Finland before going back to Norway to fight the Nazis.
We do the same thing. IE on English Wikipedia there's an article 2011 military intervention in Libya. I can't remember many prestigious western news sources calling it an "invasion" - so neither do most of us.
> The intervention did not employ foreign ground troops.
I'm no military theorist, but "foreign boots on the ground" is the lay-person's definition of an "invasion". Absent that, it could have been a war, a police action, a military intervention, or a bombing campaign, but it wasn't an "invasion".
I'd guess they would have used some other excuse to block Facebook sooner than later anyways though.
I wouldn’t describe it at Dem/GOP so much as narrative/against — but with the politics of COVID being what they are, there’s a correlation between Republicans objecting to various things and censorship.
I’m apparently a “conspiracy theorist” and source of “misinformation” because I actually read government documents. Oh well.
https://grantome.com/grant/NIH/R01-AI110964-06
https://www.twitter.com/GOPoversight/status/1450934193177903...
Interestingly, if you read the Mueller report you will see that Russia generated fake news for Democrats as well (it just didn't spread as well as on its own).
It feels like this is de-staging the aggression, you see more details, you see more failures, it feels less impressive than past fights on TV for instance.
It might skew how wars are portrayed.
In the west we can say "my government is bad" and give examples of a number of terrible and true and shameful things. In Russia or China they cannot even admit truth.
One tactic that we see from China and Russia is to criticise the chaotic nature of protests in the West and (again) to emphasise the hypocrisy on how the West deals with protests of the Left vs Right. The thing is that there IS a lot of truth here. But the key thing is that these protests occur nonetheless. In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. You cannot have hypocrisy in how you deal with political protests if you do not have political protests!
The propaganda inside Russia is very strong. Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering (economically or otherwise). And then maybe they'll wake up.
Enough that there are protests in most major Russian cities against the invasion of Ukraine.
Just yesterday, Moscow police arrested over 1,000 protesters. They can only keep up that pace for so long.
> In repressive regimes there is no freedom to protest. You cannot have hypocrisy in how you deal with political protests if you do not have political protests!
It, uh, didn't accomplish much. I'm not sure that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is any more inclined to listen to protests than the Department of State was.
Sorry, do you mean the protestors can only keep it up for so long, or the police can only keep arresting for so long?
What makes you sure that it won't cement their position even more? Western countries hurting russia's economy via sanctions basically confirms the "evil westerners" narrative.
You just stated that the people of the whole country need to start suffering. There already was period in our history when one politicial stated that we must all be destroyed as an ethnic group and our lands repopulated, and that was not good at all.
Unfortunately there’s no other options left. Sanctions are not a short term deterrent.
And getting worse.
> Let’s hope Ukraine will be able to resist long enough to force Putin to negotiate peace and to forget about any attempt to reach his goals along the Western borders of Russia by military means.
I hope with you but the force asymmetry is large. But so far they have been doing much better than could have reasonably been expected.
> It’s too bad that our hope is that enough Russian soldiers will die for Russian public to notice that war is in their house.
This will be one of the most carefully controlled statistics, there is no way that official channels will get close to communicating these numbers. I've been wondering if this isn't one of those areas where the tech world could really assist.
> There’s no popular support for the war, but the pain of war is not yet felt.
And likely won't be for weeks or even months.
> Unfortunately there’s no other options left.
Agreed.
> Sanctions are not a short term deterrent.
Also agreed, but they are a message, especially if those sanctions hurt the EU as well. I would be happy to shut down the heat here if that's what it took to get the EU completely disconnected from Russian gas. It would be very annoying but we'd live, my grandparents went through far worse than that. And I've been trying to figure out how I can really help Ukrainian refugees.
It is not that large. I remember an estimate of some strategist that you need 5x more firepower to win a battle in urban environment (cannot find the link, sorry). Even if Russia sends 20-30% of its entire army and national guard to Ukraine, this would mean only a parity with highly motivated defenders. Russia certainly has better equipment and air support, but it may still take a lot of time and casualties will be high.
Very frustrating all this. Just one of Putin's entourage showing some courage would deal with this.
>"Russians need sanctions, they need to start suffering"
When you talk like this about whole nation I am not even sure what to call it. Well actually I do but I did not yet have enough of HN.
But, how do you see Putin getting pushed out of power, other than by the Russian people? If it is required that the Russian people push him out, is it not logical that they must be motivated, with the assumption that sanctions would not be required if they were already motivated enough?
I'm trying to understand all of this, and I appreciate your opinion/perspective.
If you think that you can sanction / starve Russia to the point that simple people will organize, revolt and depose Putin I think you live on a different planet.
The only force that can really depose him are some competing elites assuming they have backing from enforcement agencies / military. I am not sure how you can sanction / bribe those into action.
Personally I think the West had quite a few years to sort things out between Russia and Ukraine. I think it was possible. I do not have any real proof but I suspect that instead of trying to find some meaningful compromise they were playing hard ball and are now reaping a "reward". What to do now - I have no frigging clue as the situation is out of control.
As for the subject of "suffering" - purposely starving the whole nation and keeping people hostage I think is what scumbags do / advocate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protest_and_dissent_in_China
"The number of annual protests has grown steadily since the early 1990s, from approximately 8,700 "mass group incidents" in 1993[1] to over 87,000 in 2005."
The number of protests in Hong Kong has plummeted in the last two years. Even annual events have been cancelled because of the new laws that can land people in jail for even being near a protest site, or a historically/politically significant location at the wrong time.
This statement shows you have no idea what Russians like to think. Better stop embarrassing yourself further with such opinions.
Source: I'm actually Russian.
And I would put more stock in that than in someone who isn't Russian.
Source: I'm Russian too.
Current Russian society has proven incapable of self-management as well as incapable of responsible management of such a large territory and military force including nukes. I suppose that as a result Russia, similar to Germany after WWI and WWII, may be broken up with limits on military force, giving up nukes, and other restrictions. Very probably losing that key place in UN Security Council. In short - Putin with clear permission from the whole society, save for a few brave souls, blew up any last chances for Russia to be a great country. (note: Putin is counting on China's support here agreed upon in exchange for Russian support in the future Taiwan takeover, yet that senile moron completely misses that once things go wrong in the Ukraine invasion - and they will - China will be the first to use the chance to get rid of that aggressive nuclear powered neighbor and to replace it with a docile client state comprised of the Far East part of that former neighbor)
Of course not everyone in Russia is like that, far from it. But a very significant number of actual average Russians are like that. While US coverage of any events is far from perfect with tons of conflicting info, there is no straight up "you aren't allowed to publish or see this, or else suffer the consequences" thing going here, unlike in Russia. You could criticize the government all you want, in public too.
Just the fact that you aren't allowed to, it would create an echochamber stronger than any self-induced FB echochamber in the US can suck one into. The main problem is that instead of many different echochambers, you primarily get one - the one controlled by the russian government. And your only options are being in it or not. The issue is that there are only 2 options, and you are heavily disincentivized from opting out. And the larger an echochamber grows, the stronger and more influential it gets. The chilling effect alone is crazy and suppresses people from saying anything. I was called a "traitor" by my classmates back when I was leaving the country. What a betrayal, wanting to actually get good education and live a good life outside of that place. And that was a bit over a decade ago, before russia-west relations got heated up to the current point, and years before Crimean invasion has even started.
Edit: half the replies down this exact thread in sibling comments seem to be a great illustration of what happens when the type of echochamber I described actually ends up working.
The russians by and large know very well not to trust the government. But who will work best in their interest instead, will NATO? Would the US trust Europe to fix their two-party "democracy" and lack of healthcare?
Upd: many commenters here clearly misread my comment, or maybe it's my poor English. "It should be blocked" means that it is in Putin's interest to block it, but better under some pretext. I am personally in a very sharp opposition to Putin's criminal syndicate.
Well, at least your stance is clear. Obviously most will disagree with a government blocking a site for being used by the current leader's opposition.
(Or did you mean that therefore it was logical for Putin to block FB? Or, well, maybe you wrote something different from what you wanted to write, not being a native English speaker)
I don't support Putin's policy in the slightest, up to the point of being detained by the police at a protest rallies.
>So it should be blocked. Upd: many commenters here clearly misread my comment, or maybe it's my poor English. "It should be blocked" means that it is in Putin's interest to block it, but better under some pretext. I am personally in a very sharp opposition to Putin's criminal syndicate.
It's ambiguous, but I definitely think most English-speakers read a sentence like "So X should happen" to mean the speaker is prescribing an action they agree with. If I was writing about what I expected another group to do while avoiding implying I agreed with their logic or was trying to raise support for the action happening, I'd phrase it without the word "should" like "so it makes sense for them to do it".
It might be reading too far into this, but this makes me very curious what differences there may be between languages and cultures in how they talk about "should", their expectations, and their own values vs other groups' values. I wonder if it's common for a sentence meaning "bad outcome X is likely [for others to do]" to be mistranslated into something read as "we should support making outcome X more likely, [it's really not so bad]".
/random-cry-against-centralisation-of-the-internet
Sure you could put your video exclusively on Vimeo or host it yourself but then you miss out on the massive YouTube audience that won’t discover your content any other way. Same with Facebook.
It's mind boggling to read HN comments advocating for restricting people's free access to internet discourse. (Reminder that Hacker News is social media, too)
Even a few years ago the idea of anyone in the tech world advocating for regulations or "crack downs" on letting people freely communicate on the internet would be unthinkable.
What exactly would you regulate or "crack down" on?
People are free to choose what websites they visit. This idea that evil social media companies have used technology to force people to view content they don't want to see has gotten out of hand.
> the deployment of sophisticated algorithms
Again, what exactly would you regulate away? Ban websites from showing related content? Ban Facebook from showing you things your friends are interested in? Ban Netflix from showing you shows you may like based on your previous viewings?
Would you ban Hacker News' algorithm that determines which posts are shown on the front page? Just force everything to be un-algorithmic and chronologically ordered like the new page and hope for the best?
I believe there is a problem, and I also believe it is possible to solve it in a way that upholds democratic values.
If you don’t think there is a problem, then we see things very differently, and we’re not likely to agree. But if you agree there is a problem, why not advocate for a solution?
All ISP providers are required to have black boxes installed on-site. These boxes can do traffic shaping (e.g. Twitter is degraded) and basic filtering based on IP addresses. I think, deep packet inspection is also feasible.
Config updates are pushed centrally to these boxes.
Self-managed VPNs still work.
Or if Twitter gets more IP addresses, they'll work for a short while, until black box config updated?
Even more simply, companies like Facebook and Twitter are stuck in the middle if for no other reason than they can't lose either half of their audience.
They're happy if a few extremists peel off to their "free speech" platforms, because it's less headache for them and they don't have to worry about those platforms appealing to the mainstream. They themselves will obviously never do anything to lose the mainstream on either side.
All I recall was accusations by political parties from both sides.
Just because some content got popular amongst some cohort, it doesn't mean it was being pushed as an agenda. That is a problem any platform that depends on user activity to surface content will have, that you might see whatever the other side wants to share too.
At some point, many free speech maximalists get driven into an ethical corner. This is one of them, and we discover that all of a sudden, many of them only support propaganda that they like. (But they will bend over backwards trying to come up with weak reasons for why bullshit from RT is totally different from bullshit from Qanon.)
Yeah, that‘s a comparison that does make sense to make. I’m sarcastic here.
Are people deliberately missing the point or intentionally evil?
https://www.statista.com/statistics/867549/top-active-social...
Come on.
If the Russian people can't read CNN, they read Pravda.
Wouldn't propaganda look more like "our country means Ukraine no harm, but in this case we are right because [reasons]"?
Also "chaos" has value. It's a big thing in how PsyOps works (from my limited understanding); when you sew chaos, you can get away with more.
But there have already been demonstrations against this war in Russia, with detainees and video footage showing this. And if you don't trust the footage, I'm sure someone knows someone in Russia who can attest to this.
So we know at least some people in Russia don't support the invasion.
More importantly, in my opinion: that kind of thinking is a trap. When your hypothesis is unfalsifiable, "all Russians online are lying, no matter what they say, and even when they agree with me" how is discourse possible at all? You cannot tell honest speech from propaganda because, by definition, all speech is propaganda?
Accurately predict the future, huh? Are you a fortune teller?
What you’re describing is nothing more than a hurtful bias, and please call it as such.
It was a time where most Poles only had two TV channels (own by communists) and handful of radio stations (also controlled by communists) to choose from. Now, before the strike in Gdansk docks happened TV or radio did not cover crime rates at all. After the strike started, media started filling the news with reports of every murder, rape, burglary they could find. This created the impression that Solidarity pushed the country into total chaos, paving the way to introducing martial law, while the truth is (you can check that in police statistics from that time) the crime rates actually went DOWN significantly during that period.
Now, did those TV channels lie or not? Every single crime they reported in the news was 100% truth, but the aggregate impression they created was 100% false.
But in this case we are being suspicious of alleged Russian teenagers saying they don't hate Ukraine but feel powerless to condition their own government in Russia. I mean, that's almost an anti-Putin statement, how can it be misconstrued as pro-Putin psyops?
[https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-ra...]
Also, Putin and his elite don’t actually give a damn about sanctions affecting “common people” (see eg post-Crimea sanctions), so I don’t see why they’d worry so much about it as to fabricate every single post on Reddit.
I would also guess that 90% of propaganda you see is primarily people spreading it for ideological and non-monetary reasons, it just has to be seeded enough for the messages to be spread.
One of the fascinating trends is that the most rapidly spreading stuff is purely visual, short video. The dominance of short clips is incredible, and allows for so much subtly misleading content.
It is utterly preposterous to believe not a single one uses Reddit AND doesn't agree with their government.
Not to mention, where do you think those people would go?
Maybe Reddit? Maybe that actually makes a ton of sense?
https://www.reddit.com/r/russia/comments/t1ya3b/memo_to_the_...
Is there a way to stop it? This is propaganda in the open.
In the UK that's Farage and Corbyn, one was a major architect of brexit and one was almost prime minister
it's a new war theater, they are not going away.
"This is different" I guess.
I should say so. Despite all of its hard-earned criticism, Facebook isn't the social media arm of a foreign invader.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VK_(service)#Durov's_dismissal
Take this this propaganda false equivalence nonsense and shove it.
There are also very different people on there.
Banning shit like RT or other Russian state media makes more sense.