EU to Ban RT and Sputnik | Hacker News Reader

EU to Ban RT and Sputnik

rt.com

41 pointsMarkoff58 comments

I regularly read RT and occasionally Sputnik. I also read the opposing views held by Western media like Economist, FT, Independent, etc. RT are always careful to acknowledge opposing viewpoints. For example, in all articles on the war, so far, they say "Moscow claims ..." and "Kiev claims ..."

Censorship happens when the authorities are afraid of the viewpoints of their opponents. So the EU is afraid of allowing Russian perspectives to be learned about by EU citizens. Its becoming plainer by the day that we don't live in a democracy.

This isn't about censorship. It's about an economic embargo.

Sadly, you’re wrong. It’s about censorship. If they wanted economic embargo they would pull the plug or Nord Stream.

Ideally they would pull the plug on Nord Stream, but people would freeze. That's a hard ask. They're going as far as they can without hurting themselves too much. Cutting Russian banks off from SWIFT was a tough call.

During all this mess, RT has always pushed the view that Putin was liberating regions of Ukraine that had lawfully and democratically seceded from Ukraine and welcomed Russian troops. I don't call that very neutral

You can acknowledge opposite viewpoints and be biased at the same time.

I don't think anyone is claiming any state media anywhere as neutral. It's clear they are biased, but they might also show opposite viewpoints.

I think these are very biased propaganda outlets but they shouldn't be censored on our behalf by our leaders.

They will, though, and we all understand why. Because we cannot handle working out the truth ourselves.

misinformation spectre.

That is crossing a line. In free societies we should be able to hear different sides.

If this is censorship, I agree. If it’s simply restricting their access and freezing their resources, it’s fine. This is war.

Russia is not at war with the EU though?

RF is at information war with the West for about a decade.

So is China, but we aren't seeing a ban of their news. If there was a more consistent ban of countries engaging in an information war I wouldn't have as much of an issue.

When people call for a restriction or ban of Chinese news they are accused of being racist censors.

> Russia is not at war with the EU though?

> RF is at information war with the West for about a decade.

I just answered your question.

> So is China

So, you know the answer already. There are countries, which cannot attack West directly, so they attack indirectly, using propaganda. Some countries are better at that than others. However, one mad country directly attacks another country now, which tries to join the Western block, to keep them in their area of influence. This is the direct attack at almost the member of the West with goal to make West weaker.

Ukraine is not the west so Russia is not attacking the west. Joining NATO doesn't make a country a western country (I assume that is what you mean by joining the Western block). Do you think Turkey is a western country? Being in the west and taking your culture from Judeo-Christian / Greek philosophy means you are a part of the west.

China took over Hong Kong which was a colony of the UK. You could argue an attack against Hong Kong is more of an attack on the west than Ukraine.

> Being in the west and taking your culture from Judeo-Christian / Greek philosophy

The term “west” is needlessly ambiguous. Ukraine sought to join the West, as in the league of countries with functioning democracies, strong militaries, growing economies and freedom for their citizens. In attacking Kiev, a modern European capital that does not want to be invaded and repressed, Putin attacks people striving for something valued and fought for in Warsaw, London, Toronto, Taipei, Canberra and Istanbul.

So china blocking nytimes/facebook/wikipedia: totally fine because they're "at information war with the west"?

I have no connection with China, so I cannot comment.

Are you serious to suggesting we should hear from Putin's personal media outlets for a source on unbiased news coverage?

A sincere question, How do you feel about Hitler and the 3rd Reich, did they deserve more outlets also?

Both sources are controlled by Putin's Government and have been instructed to restrict Invasion/War and hinder coverage of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine.

> Are you serious to suggesting we should here from Putin's personal media outlets for a source on unbiased news coverage?

GP didn't say anything about unbiased. RT has literally "Russia" in the name, so I don't think anyone expects them to be paragons of neutrality for the present situation.

RT is under direct editorial control by Putin and his people. Blocking and banning them is denying Putin an amplifier. Nobody suffers or loses a valid place in any discussions.

The person you are replying to never said RT is unbiased. They only said that free societies should allow people to hear it. Part of living in a liberal society is allowing things you disagree with.

RF is not a free society. Their media spokes what their leader allows them to spoke. They have multibillion budget every year dedicated to produce fakes and FUD.

See https://euvsdisinfo.eu/disinformation-cases/ for details.

> That is crossing a line. In free societies we shoild be able to hear different sides.

RT and Sputnik aren't "sides" in a democratic debate. They are propaganda outlets participating in bad faith with a goal to undermine those societies that have those debates.

You are in for a rude awakening my friend.

When all outlets are propaganda outlets, the only way to ensure information from both sides is to let them all scream.

I, like most HNers support Ukraine's bid for survival in this war. But, the sheer magnitude and spread of pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia propaganda would even embarrass the director of Rocky 4.

Yep, I remember a war that was clearly decided in advance but maintained a pretence of negotiability, on a bed of lies and manufactured fear of WMDs, supported in general by a compliant media with plenty of military embeds, glee over "shock and awe" and dropping of a lot more ordinance, and an almost complete absence of reporting of the victims of it. That war was Iraq.

Nothing forgives Putin for what he's doing, or the laughable propaganda it rests on and Russian media promulgation of the same, but let's not pretend our media aren't also dancing to a political tune, filtering, ignoring, misrepresenting. And precisely because we claim to live in a free society we should hold our media to higher standards of independence, verifiability and circumspection.

True. But it's not up to Mrs Von der Leyen to decide that, otherwise during the next elections, I will not...oh wait...

Last time, when I voted for the 2005 referendum on EU Constitution, I voted yes and it happened. You just vote the wrong way.

Which one:-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_Dutch_European_Constituti...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_French_European_Constitut...

exactly.

So who decides what a propaganda outlet is? Some was fox news is one. Some say MSNBC is propaganda. And some say all major news channels allow the narrative to be shifted by outside powers, and therefore qualify as propaganda

Who defends your country?

Well, Fox and MSNBC aren't owned by a hostile foreign government, so there's that.

From Russia's perspective they are.

I don't think anyone in Russia thinks that Fox News or MSNBC are owned by the American government. Like, RT and Sputnik are government-funded foreign propaganda organs; a better comparison might be Radio Free Europe.

> So who decides what a propaganda outlet is?

I do.

If you find it tough to figure out, consider more context and your place in it.

Honestly, one of the things these propaganda outlets are pretty good at is flummoxing people who make judgements based on too little information. Either they get locked up in some "it's all the same, can't decide" trap [1], or they react exclusively to some misleading cherry-picking the outlet put in front of them.

[1] e.g. "RT is financed by a government and the BBC is financed by a government, SO THAT MEANS THEY"RE THE SAME AND SHOULD BE TREATED THE SAME!1!!"

This is not the type of "side". It spreads misinformation on huge scale. Those sites can be compared to some fantasy book not real news.

I don’t think it’s so simple. I bought Bitcoin in 2013 because of Max Keiser on RT explaining its importance (and talking about the scams going on Wall Street, like silver price manipulation that Goldman Sachs was later fined for), while all the western media wrote that it will collapse to $0, and right now it gives me a comfortable life.

It’s controversial here on HN whether it’s a good or bad thing, but at this point nobody denies that it didn’t collapse how famous US economists predicted.

I can't speak about those two things, because I didn't find them interesting when they came out into daylight. I am against the next meetoo-like cancellation wave, but actually RT/Sputnik has done more bad than good in the last years. If they would not exist I believe other journalists will take care of those topics. There were others who spoke about manipulation in cryptocurrency world and it is not that we have only one news outlet, which is taking a look at gov/banking/corporations/... hands.

As a person living in Poland, where state-sponsored media fights with opposition using a cheap propaganda, I know the RT is doing journalist job wrong, because the scheme is exactly the same. Real news mixed with fake ones or hugely skewed. The reader/watcher starts believing he gets the truth, while he got a pulp of a nonsense. I compare it to a typical slot machine algorithm (i.e. "you always win") [1]. News there looks attractive for any person with conservative way of thinking. They gets you hooked into the spiral to follow their viewpoint.

The worst, many prominent politicians and other popular figures use RT/Sputnik as their source for manipulations. Sadly (thanks to RU invasion), the emperor is naked and it turns out many of them played a role of megaphone producing fear and doubts.

[1]: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/datablog/ng-inter...

Free speech is only free speech if it is "real news"?

I agree and I don't care if it's RT or ISIS or China or the Westboro Baptist Church. But the past two years have made it clear that all those lofty, lapidary ideals upon which our so-called free societies are supposedly grounded can be disposed of without the slightest reluctance, so this is no surprise, certainly not from the EU, always busy banning, mandating, regulating and fining everything in its path.

Looks like this is real : https://www.politico.eu/article/ursula-von-der-leyen-announc...

The fact that you thought it was a good idea to find a second source for an article from RT about RT says a lot about RT.

I got:

> 403 - Forbidden . That’s an error. Client does not have access rights to the content so server is rejecting to give proper response. That’s all we know.

(France, no VPN)

edit: it works when connected from a datacenter (from France)

Same here in USA. They appear to be under a DOS attack.

Works for me, on a residential connection.

Now it works. Looks like they had some kind of DDoS protection (à la Cloudflare) and their heuristics estimated that my IP was a threat.

I'll risk posting a reply on this thread, without having a big point to prove but more with the goal of getting an answer to a question, which some readers may find interesting and others may find sacrilegious.

I'm living in Russia at present, and the dilemma I face is related to sources of news and information about the ongoing "conflict"/war/invasion.

I could read Russian news, of course, but anyone and their grandmother knows that you get a nice good blob of biased propaganda on those.

I could read European / US news, where the take is quite lopsided as well.

What I actually read is HN, I read some opinions and discussions, looking for ones that are actually interesting and discuss fundamental questions rather than resort to simplifications, logical fallacies, "common sense" (quotes because it tends to be rather private and subjective, but not so common) and then try not to get too much unverified information into my head.

I do not support the war effort, and I sympathize greatly with the many people affected in one way or another by the situation.

Having said all this, is there a good source of [as unbiased as possible] information on the reasons behind the current situation and the sequence of events leading to it? Both sides just sing their tune, vilify the other side and generally try to appeal to subjective morals or feelings or just build a strawman and go from there. Now that's, of course, par for the course, we're talking about media. I, however, would like to know BOTH sides of the conflict deeper before trying to form an opinion that I can count as my own.

Thus, my first question: where do I find some sort of a compilation of arguments from both sides, where everything is not reduced ad absurdum and the opinion is left for the reader to form?

Naturally, I also have a related second question: where would one find a stream of information that's related to the ongoing events (not the history) and portrays the situation from multiple points of view?

As a habit, I try not to hold strong opinions that I don't understand completely, and I most commonly choose not to hold any opinion at all, as I do not find the time investment to sift through all the sources reasonable. Do you have any suggestions, fellow HNers? Or do you just zen out of this and file it away as "life happens, as usual"?

I think it's an advantage that you can read both English and Russian sources. And it's such a lazy idea to pursue some [unbiased] [good] source. Be an adult and try understand the world by yourself. And because it's such a difficult and tiring process, sometimes it would be better just return to your normal life and all these things (social network / news / forum discussions) are not that relevant to your life actually. They do not deserve your attention. They are just something like gaming.

I'm facing the same situation that I can read both English and Chinese sources. So I'm writing these words to myself at the same time.

Hey, a genuine thanks for voicing your thoughts on this.

I agree with what you say, I just hoped that someone had valiantly spent their time compiling a list of claims by all sides that I could read through, and drill into each one, just to have some perspective, if I ever care to.

DIY

Shielding your peasants from foreign propaganda is one of the best thing you can do in modern politics; pioneered of course by the Great Firewall, without which China would have seen a lot more political instability.

Well, RT seems to be down here (states)

There's been a DoS attack going on for some time.

Excellent - I use moscowtimes.ru for news from within russia. Not sure how reliable it is, but i've read an article which if google translate works fine, it would appear there is dissent among their forces. Also the russian ministry of defense has openly spoke, in russia, about russian losses: more than 3200 dead. That's half the losses Russian had in 8 years of the Second Chechen War. Looks like Ukraine is winning and thus Putin is resorting to nuclear fearmongering.

Ukraine is losing 1 for every 20 Russians killed so far. Putin's strategical prowess is surprisingly terrible.

As i said before. The russian army is nukes and propaganda. Look at how well its propaganda works even here on hm - some defend these weapons of war, rt and sputnik, as freedom of speech. However i do dead non government owned russian papers using google translate for intel, and the news are slowly trickling in.

I tuned in to radio sputnik once and there were americans speaking some very disturbing anti american crap. It was the most weird comedy i listened to until i realised they are dead serious. Propaganda is a weapon.

This is what I don't get about the Russian invasion. Russia is a technologically advanced country (look at their space programme), they've had all this time to develop drones, missiles, satellites, etc - yet they send in tanks and troops like it's WW2. They've spent years developing assassination techniques, and have used them in the past to remove opposition leaders, and yet they have resorted to a ground invasion to remove the Ukraine government.

None of it makes sense, unless Putin is trying to get the West to start a hot war?

Minimization of DDoS against Russian government and its media by censorship carried out against Europeans. Commies everywhere.

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