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Comment by lenkite | Hacker News Reader

Yes, it is officially banned (along with Sputnik and other Russian media). It is sad that you don't know this as an EU citizen and think that formal directives of your union are Facebook and Twitter propaganda bots

"On 2 March 2022, the Council of the European Union adopted a measure suspending the broadcasting activities of RT (and another Russian outlet Sputnik) in the EU"

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2022...

"Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine: Council bans broadcasting activities in the European Union of four more Russia-associated media outlets"

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2024...

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Yeah, I know about that. But it's not been implemented, so RT is in practice accessible. As are other Russian websites. I don't know what is sad about it, I'm just saying what is in real life, not what is on paper.

In real life, European hypocrisy is off the charts.

BBC got caught manipulating videos featuring Trump. 12000 people were detained in the UK for thought crimes. In one year. One little old lady was arrested for praying silently.

France went after Durov.

Russia media IS banned, hiding behind ISP incompetence doesn't count.

Come on. Wake up. We who have lived under actual socialist dictators can see what's happening.

Yeah, the EU (and also the UK earlier) were always lecturing to the third world on human rights and tolerance and media freedom/integrity, blah-blah not so long ago. So many pompous speeches made. Now, it is eye-rolling to see them backtrack hard on everything they stood for.

I see you have an axe to grind with EU. That's fine, but I'll say that I also lived in socialism, so I do have experience and perspective of what it was like. And precisely because of that, these EU bans don't worry me at all. I know the difference as opposed to many who think they know the difference.

We are sick of European hypocrisy; lecturing the "third world" on democracy, freedom of the press, human rights, climate change blah blah blah instead of introspecting on the mess within.

[0] https://www.outlookindia.com/national/explained-what-jaishan...

I could swear I have read something about the BBC and UK introspecting over this "scandal".

Yeah, right.

As my USAian friend once told me, "it's better to do whatever you want, and then pretend to apologise when you get caught."

"They didn't do any self-examination and if they did it was fake!"

Are you okay, man?

I'm okay. Thanks for asking. I suggest you ask yourself the same question.

Prove it.

You first as you're the one having issues.

It implemented on a DNS level. Easily circumvented by using a third party dns server (like Google or Cloudflare). Nonetheless this is political censorship plain and simple. EU crying about censorship in other countries is just pure hypocrisy.

Of course it's political, what else could it be? If Putin's regime is censoring western media, is it any less political? In other words, is there any censoring of news media (foreign or domestic) you would consider apolitical?

> EU crying about censorship in other countries is just pure hypocrisy.

I don't see any crying about censorship. It's a made up argument. Personally, I couldn't care less about censoring in Russia or any other country that I'm not living in.

> If Putin's regime is censoring western media, is it any less political?

Would like to point out that Russian bans came in response to the EU ban.

"The EU first banned Russian state media outlets like RT and Sputnik on March 1, 2022, as part of sanctions against Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia then restricted access to Western outlets, such as the BBC and Deutsche Welle, on March 4, 2022, in response. A more recent cycle occurred in 2024, with the EU banning Voice of Europe, RIA Novosti, Izvestia, and Rossiyskaya Gazeta on May 17 (effective June 25), followed by Russia's ban on 81 EU media outlets, including Politico and AFP, on June 25. In both cases, Russia's actions came after the EU's."

Personally, I think this is stupid but domestic politics sadly always trump international common-sense.

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