Hacker News Reader

Comment by xentronium | Hacker News Reader

I don't believe this will matter. United Russia, pocket party of the current government & president, has all the power to approve or reject any proposed bill. Unfortunately, no amount of public opinion has any effect on them.

View on HN

Public opinion has effect. It's just that government-controlled media would otherwise not report such controversial laws being considered. I sincerely thank Wikipedia for bringing public attention to this issue. Now twitter is trending with #RuWikiBlackout and all major Russian news channels are reporting the blackout.

Come on. The media will report about this law and the vast majority of the population will be thankful for the government cracking down on child pornographers.

Never underestimate the bullshit absorption rate of the general population.

Unfortunately, the public is being continuously brainwashed by the state controlled media to share their opinion.

"brainwashed by the state controlled media to share their opinion"? What do you mean?

Or did you mean "not to share their opinion"?

I expect "to share their [the media's] opinion" as opposed to "to share their [the citizens'] opinion".

Yes, "to share the media's/state's opinion", forgive my bad english.

It will probably not matter in terms of preventing the passage of the law, but this is the sort of thing that has led to the groundswell of support for Pirate Parties elsewhere in Europe. Given the current brewing of civil-society initiatives in Russia, this can well play a non-negligible role.

I wouldn't say "no amount", but it's clear that Russia as a whole is not ready to get rid of Putin yet. So 100k, 200k and maybe even 500k people protesting against him probably won't have much effect, unless it's millions of them, or the vast majority of them actually votes against him in the next election.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com