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Comment by herculity275 | Hacker News Reader

At this stage in the war keeping your social spaces free of malicious users seems like a much higher priority than providing the other side's civilians with accurate information. Russians can access all the info in the world with a simple VPN setup, that clearly doesn't change the situation in Russia.

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This likely keeps normal people from seeing this way better than it keeps away any hackers or bots, as Russian citizens are mostly using DPI circumvention tools. And this was a thing since the first days of the war, it's not something new.

>that clearly doesn't change the situation in Russia

Giving up is the easiest thing to do. Last time some people did, it was blamed on stereotypes like their "learned helplessness" and "fatalism".

The reality is, civilians cannot change a country's domestic foreign policy - especially in a country like Russia.

Revolutions don't work without alignment from power centers like the police, military, judiciary, and a subset of legislators.

Hosni Mubarak wasn't overthrown because of protesters in Tahrir Square - he was overthrown because General Sisi decided to ignore shoot-on-sight orders.

There's no reason for Ukraine media to create a literal attack surface when most Russians already have a decent idea of what is happening in Ukraine (and vice versa) - most Russians and Ukrainians have blood relatives on both sides of the border.

Claiming the exposure doesn't work is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. The reality is that awareness is a major factor, that was literally the main way of the power takeover in Russia (see e.g. Suponev, Ernst, Gusinsky, and Listyev). Russian government is really careful about doing things slowly and getting away with everything people let them get away with, and stopping dehumanization and letting people hearing voices is really important. Even if people right now disagree or think of it as propaganda (which it usually is, I hope nobody has any illusions about that), just existence of something in the background is enough to set up something else in the future. The time for the change will inevitably come like it always does, and the question then will become "what Ukrainian media did all this time, and where the hell they were". Turns out they may have not existed at all as well - out of sight, out of mind.

> Claiming the exposure doesn't work is probably the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard.

It doesn’t in a culture like the Russian one of extreme deference to government.

My point is there's nothing "cultural" about it, those suggesting it either have zero idea about it or have never lived through or at least analyzed 80s-90s-2000s in Russia. It's purely the artifact of manufactured consent, and media takeover that was creeping in since Listyev's times and went full speed in 2001 is a primary factor in it. Willingly going into an invisible mode for Russians while having a huge leverage (language+presence), leaving them in their bubble, is a colossal blunder.

Consciously or not, you're spreading Putin's propaganda and justify/validate his actions. "It's world vs Russia, always been and always will be, since Adam and Eve. Nothing can be done. Everybody supports the government, it's cultural. We've always been at war with Eastasia. Spread out, nothing to see here, people are powerless anyway." People like you might have a lot in common with many Russians without realizing it.

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