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.
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.
[1] https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M [2] https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog [3] https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/am... [4] https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/reddit-bans-links-to-r... [5] https://statdom.ru/tld/ru/report/domainscount/#8:date=202202...