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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Two straightforward things. It stops Russian propaganda from being broadcast, secondly it destroys their revenue. I think you need to be masochistic to have an enemy broadcast lies to your country and make money in the process.

RT is such a blatant tool of the Russian state it should have been shut down five years ago.

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Your first "thing" is begging the question. What is that blatant propaganda (your words) really going to achieve at this point ? One of the West's key marks of distinction has always been freedom of the press. By allowing our governments to decide what's a lie / propaganda that's not allowed to be published, I feel we set ourselves well on the path to becoming exactly what we're criticising here.

> By allowing our governments to decide what's a lie / propaganda that's not allowed to be published

The headline "RT turns to Peter Thiel's Rumble after Big Tech companies block the network" tells us that private companies blocked the network, not the government.

Freedom of the press like any other freedom has limits and only makes sense if the entity in question actually has any interest in doing free and genuine journalistic work rather than being a glorified arm of a foreign government.

We also value freedom of movement, or commerce or the right to bear arms, doesn't mean we let foreign spies sell weapons to domestic insurgents or let them roam across the border. Democratic freedoms are a contract with a democratic population, or democratic partners, not autocratic adversaries who will use them to undermine the very foundation they're built on.

My rights, including free speech, are not a contract. My rights were endowed by my creator.

Your creator doesn't exist. All rights are human abstractions, and the collective belief in them is a contract.

No, freedom of the press means freedom of the press. It is really quite simple.

The government is not deciding what can and cannot be published, as far as I'm aware.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/nadine-dorries-russian-ni...

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