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Comment by ljlolel | Hacker News Reader

Russia Today is banned, for one

You mean the TV station lost broadcasting-rights, or you mean the website it actually banned? Cause the website is certainly accessible for me from my European country, although that does not rule out that it is banned in some European countries.

The website rt.com is banned in the whole EU due to a decret by von der Leyen which bypassed parliament. It's trivial to bypass since it's "only" a DNS block but it's still censorship (no matter how you think about the content of RT). Same for Sputnik and the relevant TV channels.

That’s a complete lie. I’m in Germany and can access rt.com perfectly fine

No, it is not. I'm also german and rt.com is DNS blocked by the Telekom.

  dig @192.168.2.1 rt.com
  
  ; <<>> DiG 9.18.39-0ubuntu0.24.04.2-Ubuntu <<>> @192.168.2.1 rt.com
  ; (1 server found)
  ;; global options: +cmd
  ;; Got answer:
  ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 64757
  ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

  ;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
  ; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 512
  ;; QUESTION SECTION:
  ;rt.com.    IN A
  
  ;; Query time: 30 msec
  ;; SERVER: 192.168.2.1#53(192.168.2.1) (UDP)
  ;; WHEN: Fri Feb 20 09:17:58 UTC 2026
  ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 35

It's a per country thing as the EU is not 1 country.

In Italy for example RT website is blocked.

Why do you accuse me of lying when you can literally google it and the decret that got passed? Not every ISP seems to participate (if you'd googled it you find news articles complaining that it isn't censor enoughed ironically: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/30/business/media/russia-rt-...).

EDIT: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32...

you're right, I apologize for the knee-jerk reaction. I completely forgot my router doesn't use my ISP DNS. Thanks for the calm response and links, even after my inflammatory comment. Unfortunately I cannot edit or delete it anymore

It's ok, it's a heated topic. Kudos for apologizing :)

No it isn't. t. EU citizen.

It is, see the other comment. t. also EU citizen

rt.com works fine in Finland at least. I don't think we have website bans in general aside something like CSAM and copyright reasons, and even the latter at least is rare.

There seems to be a manufactured narrative from the US right how "Europe" is somehow doing large scale censorship.

rt.com loads just fine for me. If you want to do research into/get brainwashed by Russian propaganda, nothing is stopping you here.

I'm in Germany and rt.com does not resolve for me. If I use a VPN and access via, say Austria, it does work.

That seems crazy to me I read news there occasionally as I like to view opposite sides. Go to BBC, RT, France24 ,Al-Jazeera type sites and see what each has as their focus stories.

You're aware news sites are used to push agenda, some more than others, but that's half the interest of seeing what they push. And sometimes the more fringe have stories on what should be news but don't make it to mainstream media channels.

...anyway I'm more a believer in assuming people have a brain and can figure stuff out vs banning sites, both have danger to them but censorship seems the bigger danger to me.

I’m in fulll agreement with you

True! Though I can't really say I mourn the loss, it is a Russian propaganda outlet dedicated to helping their expansion war. Is this the speech the USA is going to protect? It's still weird to me that the gringoes are helping the commies now, I guess I'm stuck in the old world order!

I see your perspective. Can you see the risks?

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