This just seems completely backwards. We lament every time a country in crisis/civil war blocks Internet for its citizens: Sudan, Kazakhstan, Burkina Faso, Yemen, ... and then we cut Russia from the Internet on our side [1]
If the point of sanctions is to get the local population to rise and make it difficult for the government to keep its course, why cut out their access to independent news that would let them know what to protest? That will leave them with only state-controlled news. And now they can't submit that to Reddit to discuss it?
I get that Reddit don't want to be left out of the PR bandwagon, and as a link aggregator all they can do is block links. But this doesn't feel like helping.
Being blocked from sharing Russian-owned content is absolutely nothing like being cut off from the internet or information. At best it's limiting the spread of Russian-owned content.
I'm not sure why HN comments are so quick to make these extreme fear-mongering comparisons. Just yesterday I saw a top comment comparing Youtube removing a video to Chinese censorship...
If free speech is paramount to democracy, we shouldn't discriminate. Most people understand there is an information war at play. Most people know that information is either propaganda or carries an agenda. If you cut one opponent's voice, then it's not balanced. Why shouldn't we defend the right for Russian media to promote their narrative? Besides, legitimate, unrelated stories from one perspective also end up ignored.
Censoring Russian media only further isolates Russia, which is counterproductive. That also further separates the world from Russia and understanding regular Russian people.
Last, there is the argument that understanding the Russian state is also critical at times like these. You can also read intent between the lines. Understanding the current opinion of those in power in that part of the world is of the essence.
Again, I see sites like reddit and Youtube as megaphones. Not being on them doesn't stop your freedom to speech. Information was is also asymmetric, it takes a fraction the effort and time to spread lies and propaganda, than it takes to fact check and correct it. So especially when the people spreading lies have a lot to gain (many are making a ton of money spreading lies that get clicks), I absolutely don't believe such voice should be given a "platform". They are perfectly free to spread their own speech by themselves, but they are not entitled to free amplification and spread from Youtube or Twitter.
>Being blocked from sharing Russian-owned content is absolutely nothing like being cut off from the internet or information. At best it's limiting the spread of Russian-owned content.
I am reading Clark's Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia (<https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002RI9PMM/>). Right after hearing about YouTube shutting down Russian state media channels, I was surprised to learn in the book of the extent of the freedom of the press in late 18th-century Prussia. A British visitor wrote that people were as free to speak as back home, citing a work that was very critical of the king in the context of Poland. During the Napoleonic wars, despite the existential threat to Prussia from France, at least four newspapers that celebrated Revolutionary France as the next step in human freedom were allowed to publish.
It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech. Even liars deserve the opportunity to speak. This is especially true when there is no formally declared war between the US and Russia.
> It's always preferable to counter propaganda with free speech
Except the past few years have shown that not only does not work in practice, it can actually lead to people dying and democracy breaking.
The reality is that a lie takes a fraction of the effort than it takes to counter said lie. People can post dozens of blatant lie about vaccines and COVID on youtube in the time it takes people to fact check and counter a single one. The information war is asymmetric, especially when people can get rich from spreading lies which get clicks and attention.
I am mostly criticizing the move from Cogent, triggered by an EU directive. Reddit's is not that impactful, but it does appear to go in the same direction.
If every Russian can see what an inconvenience it is to have Putin as a leader the hope is that they will be more inclined to do everything in their power to have him replaced. Some will of course just blame "west", but there will also be those who will come to question power.
Or, as happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, these actions could further radicalize an entire population.
I think it is safe to assume that if the west applies broad and indiscriminate sanctions that devastate the lives of everyday Russians, many/most are more likely to blame the west who directly imposed the sanctions rather than their own government who will very likely use propaganda to convince them to hate their western oppressors.
It is similar, in my opinion, to the broader Islamic radicalization that occurred after 9/11 when the US employed extraordinary rendition and enhanced interrogation techniques rather indiscriminately on both known terrorists and suspects captured without charge or due process/fair-trial.
Have you considered the risk that these actions could strengthen Putin’s grip on power and provide justification to the Russian people to escalate conflict further?
I gleaned this hypothesis From a recent Joe Rohan Podcast episode with Maajid Awaz, a former Islamic radical, who turned away from radical Islam and helped educate western leaders how to de-radicalize extremists after 9/11. [0]
It certainly applies political pressure with respect to the current war, but it seems absurd to suggest that Russian citizens will replace Putin because of inconveniences on the internet.
>and then we cut Russia from the Internet on our side
This isn’t a good example of cutting Russia from the internet - Reddit is allowing Russians access to Reddit, and they can post on Reddit, they are just blocking links to Russian sites. That’s perhaps I’ll advised, and too blunt an attempt to slow disinformation, but it is not cutting Russian citizens off.
"Cutting off" means all sorts of things. Blocking russian sites from being posted is a form of cutting off.
"Too blunt an attempt to slow disinformation" is, IMO, bordering on euphemism. The increasingly enthusiastic swinging of blunt weapons has already made a terrible mess. Once the war misinformation game matures to where the Trump election or covid misinformation game has already matured to...
This week Youtube shut down an actual news channel that aired a Trump election statements in the process of reporting on it. Airing pro-regime Russian media will likely be next, in some fashion.
Yesterday, I caught up with a Russian friend of mine. He had complex views Ukraine, Putin & such two weeks ago. His views are no longer complex. He's squarely anti-Putin, anti-regime and considers Zelenski and the Ukrainian fighters heroic with no caveats. Obviously, the invasion itself played a part forming his current views. But... the shuttering of nearly all free media outlets cinched it. Now that dissident opinions are literally illegal in Russia again, he's literally supporting the opposite side in a war. This man is a lifelong nationalist.
This fearful attitude towards misinformation is dangerous, far more dangerous than misinformation in my opinion. That does not mean misinformation is not real, not a problem or not something that needs action. It does mean that this is a bad decision by Reddit.
> I get that Reddit don't want to be left out of the PR bandwagon
This is not good PR for reddit, whenever they make decisions like this the entire site erupts in revolt for a week or two. More likely, reddit thinks this is a good idea because it will reduce the spread of what the administrator's conider Russian disinformation. Acting to limit the spread of Russian disinformation has been a major effort for all the big social media sites since 2016, and this change seems inline with that pattern, just taken to an extreme that reflects the current extreme situation with Russia.
There's no point in getting the local population to rise up because the vast majority of Russians are pro-Putin fascists. Even western poll show that they're pro-Putin.
The point is to quarantine Russia so that it doesn't infect us.
have you like, actually talked to Russians? I have a number of ethnic Russian friends and I've been active on some Russian-language discords/subreddits. the ones I've talked to are aghast at this and blaming themselves for staying out of politics up until now.
there's selection bias since I'm finding Russians who are on Western social media platforms, but still, I don't think you can claim the "vast majority" are like this.
Source? The latest western polls show his approval rating in the high 60s but you have to significantly discount that bc 1) the perceived danger of speaking out against the govt skews responses towards approval 2) those polls were done before the Ukrainian crisis
For christ's sake, I use Yandex translate because it's better for Russian. I now can't link that on a language learning subreddit.
I'm not Russian.
It's not as if Russians can't just register .com domains either. This is just fucking people around purely for the sake of it.
What should I do here? Fly to Russia and tell Mr Putin to stop?
It feels like corona all over again. Bad thing A happens, so you react by doing something that's about ten times more damaging.
The whole 'least worst case' scenario in which the West being directly responsible for a revolution is somehow less likely to cause fallout than just getting involved in the war is insane. The actions of people (e.g. the Russian government) aren't a set of if-then-else chains that you can find a loophole in.
> For christ's sake, I use Yandex translate because it's better for Russian. I now can't link that on a language learning subreddit.
I'm sorry that you can't post translation links and it may seem blunt, but currently people are dying and fleeing.
If every Russian can see what an inconvenience it is to have Putin as a leader the hope is that they will be more inclined to do everything in their power to have him replaced. Some will of course just blame "west", but there will a also be those who will come to question power.
this may sound blunt. but people are always and will always be dying. most of them will be poor people in some bush conflict you do not hear or care about but there has always been a war 'somewhere'. if conflict demands we suspend all of our principles and all modes of sensibility 'for the sake of the dying people' then we will do so indefinitely.
No shit, I have friends in Ukraine and have been over there multiple times this year.
The citizens of a country don't see their existence as being a bargaining chip. There is no situation in which the Russian people simply think "oh, ok, let's just do what those people who disabled my bank account say". None.
This whole thing is an exercise in seeing just how little people know or are even interested in the world outside of their tiny bubble.
War and everything else aside, this is a remarkable sentence (as a rationale for Great Firewalling a ccTLD):
- "Even seemingly innocuous links could be hosted by someone that is less benign."
I'm afraid the future of the internet really will be a small oligarchy of walled gardens, each of which only permit mention and reference to other walled gardens, in the interest of controllability ("integrity", "security", "safety"). The independent, non-corporate internet will slowly die out in the kernel of the hyperlink matrix.
I see people, government, corporation, media... say about "No war", say about they want peace. But their actions is actually spreading feud, tbh.
Media is manipulated by government for their politics. Some people are forcing their own viewpoint to others. People blindingly spreads hates without deeply thinking. Many users from social platforms think they know very well about politics and say like a professor when arguing with others.
Yes, but that's the good propaganda, violence, erasure, and censorship though. Promoting it protects liberal westerners from the complicated tasks of basic research, historical knowledge, critical thinking, and the potentially complex and appalling realization that states and their actions --even democratic ones, from the Melian massacre to extraordinary rendition-- exist on a spectrum of good and evil. Our good propaganda, ect. saves citizens a ton of intellectual effort which is clearly better spent somewhere else. Let freedom ring undulled by the complicated.
Honestly, this whole thing reminds me a bit of the Lusitania and the way England manipulated US opinion (not saying war wasn't justified). The US and UK governments denied the ship carried munitions for close to 100 years. It was a German attack on a peaceful vessel, period. The wreck was found in the 80s, and divers were told to be careful surveying the wreck given its cargo. Later, the cargo was of course revealed to be high explosives and tons of rounds of ammunition, making it fair game for U-boats and causing the deaths of thousands (?) of travelers as a result... best of all, the German government had published warnings of the risk of traveling into a war zone in American papers.
In short, take all news with a grain of salt. The good guys are usually the ones publishing.
Addendum: I do support the Ukraine whole-heartedly; I hope this results in a free Ukraine and a new Russia.
Spreading feud is not going to war. There is no response to war that isn't going to spread feud. If the west allowed or pressured zelensky to step down or surrender, discord would still be sown, just with the Ukranian people instead of Putin
I get this whole “let’s all push Russia to enter into a peaceful conclusion” mentality. But I can’t help but feel that we’re entering 1984 territory when we’re trying to close off any and all possibility of Russian communication or products to reach us.
“But it’s propaganda” sure, fine, but no one is censoring Pro Ukrainian propaganda, so it’s not being blocked just by that fact. And myself and others would very much like to hear the propaganda from both sides even if one is clearly in the right and the other in the wrong.
I guess it's intentional. Ukranian propaganda and fakes are fine because they foster the desired narrative. No one cares about your desire to be informed and to make your own conclusions.
This anti Russia bigotry is out of control.
Disagree with the fighting all you want, but Russia is a big place with a lot of normal people just trying to live their lives.
Everyone cheering for this should be ashamed of themselves for their blind Russiaphobia.
Truth Social will be far right and have bizarre views but unfortunately that is where I would have to go to with the immense censorship in the mainstream internet and media. I really wish this wasn't the case.
I'm willing to bet Truth Social will implement its own bizarro censorship. Like, if Twitter bans claims that the 2020 election was rigged, TS will ban claims that it was fair.
And in any case, even if they don't explicitly ban left-wing views, their algos will make sure most users don't see them.
Yeah, Truth Social and Gettr censor and suck. Gab is much better in this regard (RT has a presence there for example and Gab won't cancel them https://gab.com/RTintl)
>We decided to do this due to the heavy cyber component to this war and the chance of manipulated content
The ironic thing is, this can apply to most of reddit. If they were really so worried they should shut down the entire site as it's rife with manipulated content and competing agendas. This internet era red scare is very strange to me
"And then like... I needed to do something right? So I decided we'd sensor all *hurk* Russia becau... I mean... it's just such a big deal. How bout I buy another round and we go back to my place?"
The only fake stories and propaganda I’ve seen so far are from the Ukrainians:
- Ghost of Kiev using ARMA Footage.
No evidence this person exists.
- Miss Ukraine fighting in Kiev.
It was an airsoft gun. She says she isn’t fighting.
- Snake Island soldiers killed after heroic standoff.
They all surrendered.
- Nuclear Reactor shelled, radiation rising.
A training building was involved in a relatively small firefight. Reactor was never in danger and radiation levels didn’t change.
The training building that caught fire was outside of the perimeter of the reactor complex and there is no evidence of “shelling”, which means heavy artillery.
—
People debate if this is a needed part of the information war, and I’m not here to go back and fourth on that.
I am curious what Russian propaganda or information ops look like in the west because I haven’t seen them yet. (I’m not a social media user)
Does anyone have examples?
Edit: Added details for clarity.
I’m a trained former nuclear submarine sailor, and current Army Officer, so this engagement sits at a nexus of my unique experience.
I'm not going to watch it again to find you timestamps (sorry), but I can assure you that in it other buildings (including the building with the camera, which is not the building which caught fire) are seen being shelled.
Edit: The information about radiation levels increasing does appear to have been false, but that's the only incorrect claim I've seen about what actually happened. There are also competing claims about how badly this reactor could melt down if it lost cooling, so at least some of those are incorrect. Which of these are intentionally false though is unclear.
You don’t see any Russian propaganda probably because they were all filtered out by western media. Same probably goes the other way in Russia. Propaganda machine is definitely going to be running non-stop during war times. That’s why it’s important to reserve some critical thinking skills reading all these news. Unfortunately, people eat the propaganda like breakfast on this side, I’d imagine it’s probably the same situation on the other side. All these echo chambers just add fuel to the feud. I’d hate if this is what kicks off the next world war, with both sides feeling justified and righteous, dumping nukes on the other side because “they all deserve it”.
There is an active army unit that flies a Nazi flag in eastern Ukraine. I think vice did a thing on them a few years ago.
Saw videos of them kicking black people off a bus so white Ukrainians could escape.
That gets half credit. I’m curious what else people have seen.
Is this group enlisted in the Ukrainian army? Are they holding political office or have strong influence on the politics of Ukraine?
If having a bunch of Nazi idiots in your country is "half credit", then I think every single country on earth gets "half credit" on being governed by Nazis
Neo-nazis and hard-right nationalists were instrumental in the violent coup of the democratically-elected government in 2014, and have since taken positions in the replacement government.
I can step in, because I have personal experience with Azov.
As Jew, I was suspicious about Azov, because of Andrey Biletskiy, which looked like a Russian agent for me, so I took opportunity to visit Azov, when Civil Azov (volunteer organisation) asked for help in the end of 2014, because many Azov members wanted to visit home for Christmas after half of year at front line.
I found no Nazi in Azov at all at that time. However, I found Russian agents in Civil Azov, which pretended to be Nazi. They used Nazi symbolic, 14 88, etc. like clowns. I blended in, by pretending that I'm spying on Ukrainians, but then I did mistake and escaped. I reported them, so they are cleaned.
The article you link is written by Alexander Rubinstein - a former RT and Sputnik employee.
He is a strong denier of Russian interference in the 2016 election, has been vocal in his support for Assad, and denied, not only China's genocide on Uyghurs, but that the Uyghur population even exists.
Browsing through Alex Rubinstein's Twitter it's clear that his argument basically boils down to "the west has done shitty things, so they're not allowed to say that Putin is bad for invading Ukraine"
This article is not meant to convince anyone that Putin is the good guy. It's meant to make readers doubt whether they're supporting Nazis by supporting sanctions as response to Putin's invasion - shifting the focus from the fact that Putin is indiscriminately bombing civilians.
It's perfect execution of the alt-right propaganda playbook - meant to induce apathy, because that's all that is needed for Putin to succeed with his imperialistic dreams.
here's an article [1] from Bellingcat (who are certainly quite different from RT and Gray Zone in terms of bias):
> In the most high-profile, but far from isolated, incident showing how Ukraine’s far-right movement is being mainstreamed by government leaders, Ukrainian Prime Minister Honcharuk and the Minister of Veterans Affairs Oksana Koliada appeared at an October 2019 event organized by a far-right figure on trial for murder. The event, called “Veterans Strong”, was headlined by the neo-Nazi band Sokyra Peruna, well known for its white supremacist, Holocaust-denying, and anti-Semitic lyrics.
> Some of their greatest hits include "Six Million Words of Lies"... [2]
Mayor of Konotop Artem Semenikhin was interviewed on PBS [3] this past week, and had a portrait of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera [4] hanging in the background.
I'm confused about what your argument is here. It sounds to me that your position is that this article is proof that Ukraine's government are Nazis (it's not), therefore Putin is justified both in invading Ukraine and the war crimes he's most likely responsible for during said invasion.
Nope! I think Putin only cares about having a buffer zone from NATO, much like Afghanistan is (or was intended to be) for the US against China. I'm simply providing examples to your question upthread:
> Are they holding political office or have strong influence on the politics of Ukraine?
All 3 examples hold political office and 2 are upper-level administrative positions.
Sure. Do you agree that there are fascist elements in Ukraine's government that should dealt with (by the Ukrainians, to be clear)? If you don't, which aspects of my examples do you contest?
I have no opinion on how Ukraine deals with an internal situation - that's for the people of Ukraine to decide.
I definitely don't like fascists or Nazis, which is why I find it peculiar that you're spending time contributing to a discussion by posting supporting "evidence" for an article written by a guy with a fascist agenda.
Right now I'm more worried about the fascists that try to justify Putin's war crimes.
Ukraine is not run by Nazis and Putin is responsible for the murdering of civilians in an unjustified invasion of a democratic country.
If you're also against fascism, then maybe you should stop helping them when people spread their propaganda.
> by posting supporting "evidence" for an article written by a guy with a fascist agenda.
I compare sources with opposing biases because I believe it helps to parse out what's true and what's not. Bellingcat is absolutely in opposition to the Gray Zone line, I suggest contrasting their reporting on Syria for proof of this. That both of these sources are agreeing on these claims suggests there is some truth there. If you think that ignoring it is simply the most convenient thing for now, that's at least a more honest opinion than blanket denial and willful ignorance of independently verifiable facts. The latter is far more helpful to fascism than whatever you think you're accusing me of.
The facts they choose to print are probably true - which again is part of the alt-right playbook.
Cherry pick the facts that helps you muddy the waters enough to instill doubt and create false equivalence in the mind of the reader between there being Nazis in Ukraine and indiscriminate murder of civilians plus turning more than a million people into refugees in less than two weeks.
So I'd ask you - do you think that there being Nazis in Ukraine is justification for indiscriminate bombing of civilians?
"""
We decided to do this due to the heavy cyber component to this war and the chance of manipulated content. Even seemingly innocuous links could be hosted by someone that is less benign. We certainly recognize that this is a pretty far reaching decision but there are generally other ways for most people to share the type of content that is being described.
As to why this wasn't communicated, there is a lot of things going on right now and sometimes moving fast means missing steps along the way (like sharing with mods). We did not intend to hide this decision.
"""
So it has little to nothing to do with attempting to censor.
Sorry, I'm not sure what you're talking about. But I think it's pretty basic common sense that nobody censoring information will explicitly admit to it.
This is the exact same response you'd get if it had everything to do with ~censorship~ attempting push back on anything that reduces a propaganda vector.
The difference is that in Western society (assume you're Western), we've agreed that people should have the right to think for themselves and decided what is right and wrong- so it should be up to them to decided what is propaganda and what isn't.
I must be confused because I don’t see how. Isn’t it the exact opposite?
GP is essentially saying “that’s what you’d say if you were lying” and I’m responding with a silly, opposing example of “that’s what you’d say if you were telling the truth”. They are both meaningless statements. The second serves to point out the meaninglessness of the first.
They are saying someone might post information on an .ru link that they don't want people to see. Isn't that basic censorship?
That said, this is just par for the course of Reddit. Just like how every subreddit has arbitrary rules that discourage viewpoints the moderators don't want people to see whether that's Bitcoin Cash on r/bitcoin or getting scolded by a mod on r/vancouver when I said something bad about the DTES.
Banning .ru is about as effective towards the imagined cause as subreddits putting up yellow and blue banners.
So now, those who attempt to analyze Putin's state of mind by close reading of his public pronouncements -- in full, from kremlin.ru -- need a different forum. We are collectively deciding by default that understanding the enemy is unnecessary, at least not necessary for us ordinary citizens. Necessary only for some elite, membership criteria for which proceed to tighten.
This is a betrayal of one of the core values that make a liberal, rules-based order worth fighting for.
I would give anything to go back to usenet and that everything would be taken with a grain of salt because it is usenet.
That is never going to happen though. We are society of automatons now who have mostly outsourced their thinking to the mob/group mind of social media.
If you read Le Bon or Freud's work on group psychology it may as well be talking about social media in 2022.
"The feelings of the group are always very simple and very exaggerated. So that the group knows neither doubt nor uncertainty. It goes directly to extremes, if a suspicion is expressed, it is instantly changed into an incontrovertible certainty."
It’s been less than a single ~~generation~~ human lifespan since WW2, stop pretending like our species has transcended simply because we can send some 0s and 1s across the world.
There is war. People are dying, and you’re here commenting about free speech and your lack of access to 0s and 1s.
Edit: My usage of the term “generation” was pointed out to be wrong
A generation is usually counted as somewhere between 20 and 25 years. As in, enough time for an infant to grow into an adult and then have their own children.
1: the adults in 1945
2: their babies became parents in 1970
3: their babies became parents in 1995
4: the babies of the parents in 1995 are now adults and are giving birth to the next generation
Two days ago I was trying to convince somebody who was very anti-war and sceptical of the mainstream media narrative on Ukraine, that Russian propaganda targets people like him, and that it's moderately effective. I posted these two YouTube videos [1] [2] of a journalist described as an "Independent Canadian Journalist" which got close to a million views between them, and proved that they were not independent and affiliated with RT by linking to RT [3]. RT.com has also been banned by Reddit [4].
Banning .ru sites doesn't actually undermine Russian military interest. It just undermines people like myself who want to link to Russian sources to expose Russian military propaganda. It drives sceptics towards unreasonable echo-chambers where they're more prone to and less aware of foreign influence. It causes Russians to host their propaganda on .com's where people will be less sceptical of it which is just correcting your enemy while they're making a mistake. If you were going to censor them, a targeted blacklist would at least have the benefit of letting through anti-war .ru's, it's not as though everybody in Russia supports this war. A .ru ban fails at the very goal it's trying to accomplish.
Banning 5 million .ru domains [5] is also just so destructive. The vast majority of websites blocked with have nothing to do with politics or news or the war. Fuck the people who run and use those websites, I guess?
The Russian perspective is also valuable to listen to, even if their government is horrible. If a Ukrainian war criminal in Ukraine rapes and murders a bunch of people, by censoring Russians who are uniquely capable and motivated to expose such war crimes. We're going to help war criminals get away with and continue perpetrating their crimes. War criminals regardless of country benefit from wartime censorship. Hearing the Russian perspective and engaging with Russians also helps to end war diplomatically and peacefully. It's the best situation if we hear the Russian perspective, but we're AWARE it's the Russian perspective, so as not to be misled by bias and to be sceptical of potential slanders.
A .ru ban totally fails at its intended goal, it hurts a lot of bystanders, and it undermines the goal we should be aiming towards.
the targeting of conspiracy theorists and right wing (wrong think) opinions, in the market place but especially by silicon valley, has all been a warm up.
this is an authoritarian feature of our merger of state and market that will continue to grow and find increasing number of avenues for application.
If the point of sanctions is to get the local population to rise and make it difficult for the government to keep its course, why cut out their access to independent news that would let them know what to protest? That will leave them with only state-controlled news. And now they can't submit that to Reddit to discuss it?
I get that Reddit don't want to be left out of the PR bandwagon, and as a link aggregator all they can do is block links. But this doesn't feel like helping.
[1]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/internet-service-provider-coge...