Ask HN: Do Russians read the open Internet? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do Russians read the open Internet?

10 pointsTekMol12 comments

Personally, I get all my news from aggregators like HN and Reddit. If my country would do propaganda, I would barely notice it. Because the amount of local news I read is just a small part of my news consumption.

How is the situation for other HN readers? How is it for the people in Russia? Can they access the whole internet? Can the majority read English?

I took a look at my web server stats and it turns out 2% of my visitors are from Russia. 30% of them are from Moscow and 10% from Saint Petersburg. I guess these are people who already have an overview of international news about the current situation? Or would it help to put some infos up?

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> If my country would do propaganda, I would barely notice it

> Reddit

Thanks for the laugh. The whole Reddit is now in "Evil Russkis" mode, you can't voice the reason and common sense for absolutely anything.

HN is just less known, but the same happens here too.

Yes, you wouldn't notice the propaganda, because there would be only one side you hear.

> Can they access the whole internet

Well, Twitter and Facebook are now banned.

> Can the majority read English

No. [0] Translators exists but that doesn't answer if they want to read anything in a foreign language. Do you often read articles in the language you don't understand?

> have an overview of international news about the current situation

They have access to information but that doesn't imply they know, want to know or what they are on the same footing with you even if they know.

> Or would it help to put some infos up?

And what 'infos' you want to put up?

[0] https://www.rbth.com/news/2015/12/03/percentage-of-rusians-w... (2015)

> About a third of Russians (30 percent) speak English to one degree or another: 20 percent can read and translate using a dictionary, 7 percent are familiar with colloquial language, and 3 percent are fluent speakers, according to Romir research holding.

    The whole Reddit is now in "Evil Russkis" mode, you can't
    voice the reason and common sense for absolutely anything.

Can you give an example for some background info that cannot be linked to on Reddit? Some link to an interesting article written in English? We could give it a try then. Submit it to Reddit and see what happens.

Try and go to a Russia-aligned (or at least not Ukraine-aligned) subreddit, copy a defense of Russias actions, or a condemnation of the Ukraine government, and see how it fares on big subreddits, like r/news or r/europe. You'll almost certainly get banned, esp. if you link to media articles that support your argument. Even if your entire argument is factual and supported by western media articles.

Moreover, it's not a well-hidden secret that Reddit is a very popular target for information warfare on behalf of western intelligence. Information warfare and media operations with the intent of controlling the narrative is extremely widespread. It's not surprising that Russian media are blacked out and labeled misinformation. Closing ones ear to the opposing viewpoint had already become a prime virtue, and isolating out dissenting opinions is an important part of this kind of information warfare. Western news media is absolutely steeped in pro-Ukraine propaganda, obviously much more that even Russian media is with pro-Russia propaganda. It's a case of fish not knowing they're in water. It's insane to me to see the extreme extent of demonisation of Russia, and even ordinary russians on reddit. You won't see this universal kind of demonisation in Russian media. Controlling the narrative is a powerful thing.

Just ask how come they know it was Russain saboteurs. [0]

> "we were later told by the Ukrainians that we were being ambushed by a saboteur Russian reconnaissance squad"

This is not.. very credible.

Just exactly how they said when "Russian tank drove over a car"... when there were no Russian troops in Kiev. [1,2]

Or you can ask why Ukranian army decided to fight from the nuclear plant buildings (Zaporozhye NP) fully knowing they would be fired in the response.

Or you can ask how come the "Russian cruise missile" came from west side [3] (notice the sun position and the local time, ~08:00) when... there were no Russain troops there at that time. Check the map in the link [4]. Check another angle [5].

[0] https://old.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t6tk3i/news_team_a...

[1] https://observers.france24.com/en/europe/20220301-video-debu...

[2] https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Areddit.com+These+videos+do+...

[3] https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/t1qxse/alleg...

[4] https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/t1qxse/alleg...

[5] https://old.reddit.com/r/CombatFootage/comments/t1qpsw/anoth...

I am notice a trend of pro-Russian posters on here using this format of citations..

I am notice (sic) a trend of anything not pro-Ukrainian everywhere immediately labeled as pro-Russian.

QED

> The whole Reddit is now in "Evil Russkis" mode, you can't voice the reason and common sense for absolutely anything.

Hmm... Putler's trolls have been fairly easy to spot, among other things because, you know, Russian grammar apparently have no articles. (Perhaps all the Slavic languages lack them; I think I've seen the same thing from Poles and Czechs and whatnot.)

The somewhat more sophisticated among them have presumably picked up on this, and are making sure to put some in where they belong... Except sometimes they probably over-compensate, and put articles in where they don't actually belong in idiomatic English.

> > About a third of Russians (30 percent) speak English to one degree or another: 20 percent can read and translate using a dictionary, 7 percent are familiar with colloquial language, and 3 percent are fluent speakers, according to Romir research holding.

Depends how you define "fluent", I suppose.

> you can't voice the reason and common sense

Hmm...?

> Can they access the whole internet? Can the majority read English?

Poorly. It's completely unnecessary for their day-to-day lives.

The majority, like in most of the world, doesn't "read Internet". They have some icons on their smartphones they click to access social media or messengers. Their laptop/desktop browser has a default (sponsored) home page with some search engine which they can use for their news feed (as is the case with Yandex) or to access some online shop or the local version of Yahoo Answers. They can mostly use e-mail with the web-interface, but this skill is surely on the decline, considering how widespread one-time logins with a phone are becoming.

> I guess these are people who already have an overview of international news about the current situation.

There's lots of us here still, even considering the paragraph above.

Все Граждане России имеют доступ в интернет. Сейчас в России даже нет тарифов сотовых операторов без интернета. Информационная война ведётся в в разных информационных плоскостях из-за языкового барьера. Страны НАТО не слышат русских, русские не слышат страны НАТО. Если вы углубитесь в новости, то увидите что у Российских войск задача уничтожение военных объектов, а не граждан страны. ------------------------------------------------------ All Russian citizens have access to the Internet. Now there is not even a cellular operator's tariff without Internet in Russia. The information war is being fought in different information planes because of the language barrier. NATO countries do not hear Russians, Russians do not hear NATO countries. If you go deeper into the news, you will see that the Russian troops have the task of destroying military targets, not the citizens of the country.

> Or would it help to put some infos up?

I live in one of the autocratizing nations with access to most of the internet as of now. I think that was the case in Russia too till just 2-3 years ago.

What I've observed in my society is that mere access to information isn't enough. Ethics and critical thinking, or lack of them in general, influence how that information is consumed.

The delusions, myths and lies of the dictator are not all his own inventions but often emanating from, and willingly co-opted by, many of his generation in his society.

State propaganda merely enforces those myths that the people themselves chose to nurture in their minds without any ethical or logical scrutiny.

All news gets judged through that mental framework. If many people believe "liberals" or "the west" are out to destroy their country, then any news about their war crimes will be dismissed as fake news by such minds even if they have access.

That's why I'm a bit skeptical about the black and white narratives where all the evil is only in the dictator's government and media, while their society is portrayed as innocent.

An ethical person who's lived in a dishonest society for years and experiences it daily is unlikely to trust anything the state says. Which means, if many people are ready to side with a dishonest state, then I think they aren't all that honest and innocent to begin with.

Some sites are blocked for sure from what I understand including FB but keep in mind their popular internet is different that in US. For example VK.com is very popular there instead of FB.

What angers me is that big tech is constantly trying to relieve its users from the burden of learning English. I think by limiting exposure to the spoken and written English and making webpages instantly machine-translatable (translation from English to Russian is usually garbage, but many people still actively use it), shoving local news and ads to those who does not want to see them (Youtube, can you please treat me as an American if when select US in settings, god damn it), it has done more harm than good.

The Internet has the cool effect forgetting my IRL identity. I want to be in the communities and identifying with skills and beliefs rather than my nationality. I've replaced google with ddg and youtube with invidious/piped/newpipe because I am tired of them constantly adjusting to my locale.

Nowadays zoomers like my younger brother with all this like machine translation snake oil doesn't even care about learning English, my English was better at his age. He is perfectly content with Russian-language content and translated webpages. It's sad because there are so much possibilities for learning foreign languages today and he is missing the chance to do it at young age.

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