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Comment by shabier | Hacker News Reader

> The Russian State is and has been for a long time pushing a profoundly anti-Western agenda.

We've been having our fair share of anti-Russia propaganda as well, we're not innocent of what we're accusing Russia of.

> The Russian people are completely controlled. They have no way, even if they knew exactly what was going on and understood it for what it is, to rally, no one to lead them, no way to resist.

What exactly do you think would happen to the west if we censored Russian "propaganda"?

> I am in favour of both the removal of ".ru" and related domains

... And they'll move to another TLD just as easily as they were booted off the .ru or even worse; it moves outside the scope of the "accessible" web where their ideas are not challenged. Overall, a bad idea, IMO.

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> We've been having our fair share of anti-Russia propaganda as well, we're not innocent of what we're accusing Russia of.

No. These are not comparable. In the West, you have a range of views and there is no deliberate censorship of views by the State. In Russia, you get and only get what the State produces, and what they've been producing over the last several years has been crazy; Ukraine is not a country, and we have a holy mission to liberate them.

> Overall, a bad idea, IMO.

It is sometimes better to act than not to act, even if what you do is not perfect; it all adds pressure and expresses that you are serious about what you're doing.

> In the West, you have a range of views and there is no deliberate censorship of views by the State. In Russia, you get and only get what the State produces

I would argue that big tech is making an effort to sway public opinion in certain favorable directions, if not outright censor them under the guise of safety or whatever generic excuse we've heard over the past decade. The information we've been digesting is essentially only what big tech allows to be heard.

Yes, there are several ways to access information from alternative methods but from what it seems like, only a fraction of both the West and Russia do that.

By censoring an opposing agenda, albeit anti-west propaganda, you will create exactly the same vacuum as you accuse the Russian government of.

> It is sometimes better to act than not to act, even if what you do is not perfect; it all adds pressure and expresses that you are serious about what you're doing.

Strong disagree. We should do the right thing rather than just anything that could put pressure on them.

The West is a vast place and what you say about censorship is not universal, and I very much doubt it is absent at all. Tell me about Assange or Snowden. And if you want to hear what happens in Greece (a Western country you, in another country, probably hear nothing weird about in the news apart from new austerity measures) it is like Northen Korea with capitalism, and I must struggle to think why this could be a stretch except from executing people - oh wait, that is a thing too, if you piss off the wrong people. Plus, on the censorship side, social media did ban russian sources, and governments did ban russian channels from operating.

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