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Comment by shimonabi | Hacker News Reader

What measures does the Russian government take to prevent access to foreign media?

Russian authorities block access to internet sites they don't like. I imagine that on a technical level it's not hard to bypass those blocks, but the vast majority of the population is neither motivated nor technically savvy enough to do that.

I don't know about foreign media specifically, but in the last couple of days they shut down some of the few remaining independent media outlets (TV Rain and Echo of Moscow) and have reportedly completely blocked access to Twitter and Facebook:

https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/75547/

The federal agency Roskomnadzor also blocked access to the Russian language portal of Estonian Public Broadcasting because of war reporting: https://news.err.ee/1608512684/russia-blocks-err-s-russian-p...

Note that Europe also bans media they don’t like, namely RT News and Sputnik, along with severe guidance on content with regular threats of fines or deplatforming, coming from governments such as CSA in France. Censorship has absolutely a role in democracy.

I think the difference is that western media generally can and do publish at least some critical pieces. The same can't be said in Russia right now. It's a whole different level.

Exactly. Just before the war kicked off, the BBC was doing nothing but hammering the UK prime minister on various matters. How many Putin critical articles did RT or Sputnik news post?

They don't criticise Putin. They write about the criticism he receives. Kind of like a news outlet would.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/05/the-predictable-demise...

Any writing "about the criticism he receives" is to deflect it. The state run channels are never critical of Putin because he controls the channels.

And, just to be clear, "can't be said of Russia right now" really means "publishing information that disagrees with the official line is punishable by up to 15 years in prison".

https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2022/03/04/i-vse-ravno-15-l...

Translation:

https://novayagazeta-ru.translate.goog/articles/2022/03/04/i...

The same happens in the "free" and "democratic" EU too (which I belong to):

https://www.la.lv/par-dezinformaciju-un-krievijas-agresijas-...

Translation:

https://www-la-lv.translate.goog/par-dezinformaciju-un-kriev...

That took me by surprise.

That is not the same.

It's pretty similar. Latvia is not in a state war and is banning certain political opinions. No matter how vile, that is a line that should never be crossed outside of literal wartime.

It's not just the media. Most western countries have entire opposition political parties. And regular citizens bad mouth their leaders all the time with no fear of repercussions. I directly hassle the leaders of my country on their official twitter accounts.

There could be a small chance that not being moral absolutists on this issue could be a slippery slope, but it's still not the same.

The DPI is avoidable, the hard times would come when they'd start to block entire networks, but it seems they've learned the lesson from the hunt on Telegram.

The USSR used to have high-powered jammers used to jam the short-wave radio frequencies of the VOA, BBC, etc. Those noisemakers could be received worldwide. They shut down decades ago.

Here's a picture of one, abandoned.[1]

[1] https://forums.radioreference.com/threads/old-russian-jammer...

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