YouTube is reportedly throttled to near unusable levels too¹, although that seems to be done with enough deniability to back-track should it cause too much problems for the economy.
This flurry of social media ban might signal the start of the end of Putin's regime, with sudzha's fall by Ukraine. Right now Ukraine can seize artillery storage and destroy rail lines anywhere behind the frontline with ease, and Russia seems paralyzed. If they soften any of the frontline to reinforce the interior, that frontline will collapse.
TikTok is focusing on longer videos these days via allowing the video length to be longer, because short videos are a money sink. Meta realized this already as well, as Mark mentioned that they're losing 1B a year on short form videos.
Engagement. Ads in short videos are more likely to be skipped or navigated away from compared to an ad in a longer video when the user is engaged and more likely to stay engaged with that content through the ad.
This is more complicated than that. First, you have alternative railroads, so while Ukrainians can (and will) make logistics harder, the won't be a big problem (seized munitions and fuel is though). Another issue are power plants.
They do have reserve troups. The main issue is that those cannot be redeployed that fast, the redeployment will show weakness and be costly, at least politically.
Also, they have to move their S400 first (which are easier to move than patriot system to be fair, but will have to be recalibrated). Which is why the Falcons are a huge deal and their arrival probably unlocked the offensive (depending on their payload they could also be useful as more than a threat).
Russian here. Just to give you an idea of how aware of VPNs the general public is: I have a friend, she's 30 and she's never been tech-savvy or nerdy. A typical stay-at-home single mom focused on raising her kid. Today she asked me if I know of any good routers with built-in VPN support, and we had a chat about VPN protocols.
I prefer the situation to be like in Russia before 2014 or some other more optimistic times. I don't get much joy out of that China or North Korea might be worse.
Russian government is very concerned about the brain drain over the past two years. Fortunately (for the russian government), western sanctions on Russia make it much harder for educated professionals to relocate.
Hard to say for sure obviously. The timing is pretty convenient, if the government is doing a poor job responding to an invading force they have good reason to limit communication among the public to tools they can control.
Yes. They, amazingly, discussed it already on state propaganda TV - how much should people know?
The regime really is concerned about controlling the narrative before it gets out of control. Neither panic nor clamoring for nuclear holocaust helps them here.
This won't do much to stop the flow of information into Russia, but might hamper the flow within. I don't think it's meant to just affect the battlefield (and in that case it could have just been regionally limited.)
It's more likely to be a preparatory move. I have a feeling that the risk of a nuke being used just went up.
For one, perhaps because Telegram does not take sides and does not take down Russian content.
Perhaps because they had some agreement in the end, perhaps because they simply couldn't.
In any case, it is now vital information infrastructure in ways YouTube isn't.
Even though YouTube definitelt is critical. It's not just an amusement source.
> For one, perhaps because Telegram does not take sides and does not take down Russian content.
it does take sides, FSB can take down channels that are too concerning for them, but for the most of it they are pleased with just monitoring and getting user data they need
I can't remember a single instance where Tg will take down a channel that is too concerning for FSB.
After all, Telegram is a worldwide platform and you can directly read Ukrainian news feeds there if you wish so. What would a concerning channel make compared to that?
YouTube was constantly blocking Russian channels and striking down videos, whereas I only remember Telegram banning a single channel in three years, due to a direct US sanctions hit.
As the vote kicked off on September 17, the Smart Voting app disappeared from the Apple and Google online stores
Seems no special treatment though? Telegram always experiences double standards, imo. If faang does it, then it’s following the sovereign law. If telegram does it, it bends to FSB requests. Telegram still works in russia - it came to “some agreement”. Whatsapp never ever questioned there - it’s a secure end-to-end messenger.
> In any case, it is now vital information infrastructure in ways YouTube isn't.
Potentially, but then there is still the risk of what the government knows. Russian citizens living in the West who donated to Ukrainian organizations are at risk if they travel to Russia. If telegram is surveyed by the Russian state that turns into a problem quickly.
It can even go both ways: nothing prevents Telegram to be blocked in Russia, as well as being used to harvest potentially life threatening info about Russian citizens at the same time.
Same for YouTube. If it gets blocked for good, does not mean you can't go to jail for speaking out while on YouTube.
The obvious take away at the moment is to think twice what you write anywhere in the Internet, as well as to avoid doing things with such dire consequences, or at least not bragging about them anywhere on the net.
I think you mean to say Russia will not accept platforms controlled by NATO/US. Decentralized protocols such as XMPP, Matrix, Simplex, Session.. work fine and are not targeted for blocking.
Unfortunately democratic nations sometimes go there, too. The UK has threatened to weaken encryption in a way that would force signal to leave. Other nations have made noises about it, too.
Russia is trying to follow China's example to shed dependence on West controlled services and grow domestic alternatives. Which is long overdue since they don't have equitable access to these services.
Aleksei Didenko, a member of the Russian State Duma, has said that Google, including its Android operating system and Apple's iOS, will soon be blocked in Russia.
Didenko advised the public not to cling to services like YouTube, stating, "Soon Google will be blocked, along with Google Android. iOS will also be blocked, and this will not be our initiative."
Google has been blocked in all of China for many years. They mainly use AOSP (Android Open Source Project) and variants without any proprietary Google. Their IOS devices connect to servers in and run by China. Russia can do something similar, but they are giving people some warning and time to migrate. Russia has banned IOS for most government employees after the Operation Triangulation fiasco.
As sibling commenter says, the China model is probably ideal for dictators. In China WeChat is used for everything: communicating, social media, payment (along with AliPay). And it doesn't take much imagination how effective that is for surveillance and control. They already delete posts that are "dangerous to the harmonious living" (i.e. things that are against the government narrative), and if you're afraid you'll get banned and lose your means of contact with friends (as well as a payment app needed for day to day living), you'd probably censor yourself.
And monitoring payments is another method of surveillance, along with the monitoring of communications (even with E2E encryption, just knowing which people are talking to each other, and with what sort of intensity, is useful for surveillance).
And Elon Musk wants to make a similar universal app out of the corpse of Twitter... ha, wouldn't we all like that. Ironically all the people who still defend him overlap with the ones who are yelling "The woke lefties want to control our speech!"
> Signal: Will leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees
Considering the Lavabit case [1] this reek of grandstanding to anyone else? Not saying Europe is panacea but considering the unaccountability of American intelligence or law enforcement the European position does seem more favourable.
And to those who bring up policies such as Chat Control. The vote for that in Brussels has been postponed after enough outcry. [2] Hopefully it does not come back to life however them trying again under a different banner would not be a surprise either.
Please don't spread FUD. If you're really this worried (about what? the client is still open too, or use Molly-FOSS if you're that paranoid), run your own server too.
TMK most of the server code is open source but part is not. Therefore the service is not classified as open source. Try navigating into the spam-filter @ a30a761 folder to see that it is unavailable.
I am not worried. I do run my own servers for various comms and know what information an admin can monitor and collect.
The way you phrase this makes it sound like Signal is compromised. I don't think that conclusion is warranted based on the evidence you've presented.
The analyses you point to don't support this conclusion, either. Rather, they merely point out that the project got a government grant for $3 million. But projects like Tor were funded by the Office of Naval Research and the internet itself was funded by ARPA.
I read HN for thoughtful, technical commentary. But this reads like a FUD.
> I can understand the Kremlin's concern and need for higher security
What concern exactly?
They have a very vague statement that Signal doesn't follow "local laws related to anti-terrorist operations". They haven't given any other details. So I am sorry, but what are you on about?
Pretty much everything about the US's actions regarding Russia and Ukraine indicate the opposite: they want to end the war and Russia's ambitions of expansion without a regime change (mostly because nukes: Putin getting close to losing power is one of the plausible scenarios where he would use them, to say nothing of whoever's in the mix in the power vacuum that will exist afterwards). If they just wanted Russia to collapse they'd be sending way more stuff to Ukraine (who is A-OK with Russia collapsing if it gets them off their land) as opposed to drip-feeding it in. NATO is far from a unified block in this regard: some members (generally the ones bordering Ukraine) are pretty aligned with Ukraine and basically sending everything they can, some are even more nervous about escalation than the US.
Try researching these:
1. When was the last time Biden or anybody in the administration tried talking to the Kremlin to use diplomacy to end the conflict?
2. Try finding any evidence that Russia wants to expand its federation into Europe.
Russia is twice the size of the US with half the population. They have $81T of resources in the ground. They don't need any more land. They need people.
What diplomacy would you suggest, given the other goal of "Russia cannot gain anything from the war in Ukraine"? Russia has made blantently clear with their war in Ukraine that they want the good old USSR back, and I (and most of the population of Eastern Europe) have little faith they'd stop there. That's the reason Ukraine is getting so much support: if Russia gets even a little bit more land from this war, they'll just try again. They got Crimea basically for free and they took that as a signal they could keep going. Why would they stop taking land if no-one bothers to stop them?
And, yeah, duh. I would suggest, if they want people, that they treat their population with some respect so that fertility rates aren't in the ground, they don't have a massive brain drain as everyone tries to leave, maybe some people might want to immigrate, and oh yeah, maybe don't have a war which absolutely decimates their population of young men? Russia could be so much better if they sorted their own shit out before making it everyone else's problem, but that would involve Putin loosening his grip on power.
I suggest maintaining a neutral buffer zone between NATO and RF by not bringing Ukraine and other bordering nations into NATO. You found zero evidence that Russia wants to expand its borders. Although the communist party is the second largest in RF, its influence is relatively small and sees little likelihood of gaining significant power to restore the USSR.
The Donbas is populated mainly by Russian people who had been in a civil war with western Ukraine since the 2014 Maidan coup. They wanted to join the Russian Federation for years, but Russia did not want that until the situation became untenable.
Russia's economy is growing faster than the US and Europe. Perhaps that will encourage immigration. RF is implementing many policies to aid families to have more children and encourage controlled immigration. They could use about another billion people in that vast and rich territory.
I was referring to claims we hear that Russia wants to expand its empire into European countries outside of Ukraine. RF expressly did not want to take in the Donbas as is shown in the Minsk treaties and its actions repeatedly. It tried to exert influence to stop the civil war with subsequent peace treaty negotiations, but those were thwarted. https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/official-john... RF was left with little options at this point.
These aren't "claims"; Putin and his crew are quite open and unapologetic about their intentions in this regard.
March 31, 2014:
After annexing Crimea and with troops massed on the border of Ukraine, Vladimir Putin will not stop trying to expand Russia until he has “conquered” Belarus, the Baltic states and Finland, one of his closest former advisers has said.
According to Andrej Illarionov, the President’s chief economic adviser from 2000 to 2005, Mr Putin seeks to create “historical justice” with a return to the days of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, and the Soviet Union under Stalin.
Speaking to the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet, Mr Illarionov warned that Russia will argue that the granting of independence to Finland in 1917 was an act of “treason against national interests”.
“Putin’s view is that he protects what belongs to him and his predecessors,” Mr Illarionov said.
“Parts of Georgia, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and Finland are states where Putin claims to have ownership.
He added: “The West’s leaders seem, from what they say, entirely to have forgotten that there are some leaders in the world who want to conquer other countries.”
“The western territories of present-day Poland are a gift from Stalin to the Poles, have our friends in Warsaw forgotten about this?” Putin said. “We will remind you.”
More likely what he seeks from most of these countries (except the Baltics) is a "sphere of influence" with significant restrictions on the sovereignty of these countries, rather than direct annexation. But either way, and unmistakably -- a modern-day "empire" is what he's after, by every available indication.
[Johnson Forced Kyiv To Refuse Russian Peace Deal]
Though often repeated, this is simply misinformation. I don't have time to unpack it for you; but the source quoted in the article (VR faction leader David Arakhamiya) explicitly denies the overall spin of events as presented in the article.
Crimea is history at this point.
Not to the Ukrainians, and certainly not to the Tatars.
These are mostly statements from other people rather than Kremlin officials speaking in any official capacity. I am sure some people in Russia in high positions of power fascinate about a greater Russia. The problem as I tried to explain is that Russia already has a massive country but not enough people to tap its massive natural wealth. Taking over other countries is a massive drain and doomed to fail when that population does not want to be ruled by another country. It simply makes no rational sense for RF to forcibly overtake other European countries. Ukraine conflict was forced upon them. They may debilitate the current government in Kiev, but they will not ultimately take over all the country that includes the staunch anti Russian Ukrainian population. That is called swallowing a porcupine.
I don't know who Andrej Illarionov is or why I should trust what he says Putin wants.
To understand why this conflict was imposed upon them, look at the history. Russia was invaded by Napoleon and Hitler through Ukraine costing Russia ~23M people in the latter. James Baker and US representatives promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand one inch east of Germany back in 92. They lied and many countries were brought under NATO. There is a long documented strategy to surround Russia, cause regime change, split up the country to smaller states, and exploit its $81T in resources in the ground. There is much more, but I think I have said enough.
My view on Putin is that he failed in many respects. He seemed to hope that NATO could be trusted to do business with. He may have been delusional or may not have had the support to strike back sooner. All trust between the two powers is now gone, and we are in a dangerous place now.
I'm pretty sure you know what Wikipedia is; he's on there. Even that Russian-owned search engine that you prefer to use for some reason will answer your question for you. Except there's no need, because his intro was also in one of the article snippets above that you presumably read very carefully:
Andrej Illarionov, the President’s chief economic adviser from 2000 to 2005,
So I'm pretty sure you could know exactly who he is, and indeed could find out pretty much everything you need to know about him if you wanted to.
Plus, isn't it strange that you said
These are mostly statements from other people rather than Kremlin officials
When in fact all the 3 persons quoted were "Kremlin officials", including Putin himself and his right-hand man, Medvedev?
That's all I have time for. This discussion has gotten very weird indeed, so I'll have to bow out.
I enjoyed exploring the weird argument: Based on some vague statements in unknown context related second hand by an advisor and reported through a NATO outlet, we sacrificed the lives of over half a million Ukrainians and over $200B of our taxes to ensure that both houses of the Russian parliament do not approve conquering another European country.
Never mind that RF already has a vast territory of land and resources with not enough people to populate and tap it. Never mind that such an invasion would invoke article four of NATO and lead to world war three and probably go thermonuclear. Never mind that if RF survived the war, they would not be able to hold onto a territory where the residents oppose the occupiers.
Other countries must see us as stupid, insane, or both.
False. The regions in question identified as Ukrainian, and by a solid majority (55-45) in the most recent census. Yes -- even Russian speakers identified as "Ukrainian" when given the choice. And just because 45 percent identified as "Russian", for most this was a matter of linguistic identification, nothing more. It doesn't mean they were irredentist, or actually wanted to live in Putin's Russia.
Who had been in a civil war
False. In no sense was the 2014 conflict ever a "civil war". It was led, orchestrated, and fought by Russian nationals from the very start. This is openly acknowledged by Russian sources, including the very people who organized the initial skirmishes, and there's really no controversy about it.
2014 Maidan coup
There was no "coup" either, and these factual inversions are starting to get very tedious to correct.
2014 may not have looked like a coup from the media and is difficult to prove as one. Too much US state department involvement makes it look like one if you did deeper. Countless analyses by others with inside knowledge believe it was in the style of a color revolution. Too many sources to list here.
(1) Do you actually trust information posted on websites run by Alex Jones?
(2) The "referendum" you're referring to has been widely denounced as a sham by many international organizations (such as the UN and OSCE), and nearly every government on the planet for that matter, except for North Korea. Even close Russian allies such as Hungary and Serbia refused to recognize the results.
Are these facts of no concern to you -- or do you simply prefer to take the occupying power's word on the matter?
1. This is not run by Alex Jones, but to answer your question, I trust very little. Alex Jones is more trustworthy than most mainstream media. He voices much opinion and speculation, but he and his crew do not lie to manipulate us into war.
2. International observers oversaw the election and determined the elections to be free and fair. You are free to deny election results, but you should provide some kind of evidence to back your claims that it was unfair in some way.
Re: Alex Jones -- so he created the site, but lets other people run it now. Either way, it's his baby.
He voices much opinion and speculation, but he and his crew do not lie to manipulate us into war.
Instead they lie and manipulate us (some of us, anyway) into accepting Putin's narratives as to how the war started, and into an eventual settlement favorable to his demands. And into believing that nearly everyone in the occupied regions happily voted to be reabsorbed into the Motherland. In an election that was of course free and fair, and overseen by international "observers".
International observers oversaw the election and determined the elections to be free and fair.
Not from any major organizations that usually see to these things, such as the OSCE or the Council of Europe.
Instead -- it's not surprising that the sham referendum also had sham "observers". Here's a report from one who deeply regrets having taken part, saying he felt used by the Russians, and that "I was so naive as to think I could separate the technical aspects of vote counting from the political dimensions of the situation":
You are free to deny election results, but you should provide some kind of evidence to back your claims that it was unfair in some way.
So what is your explanation as to why no government on the planet, besides North Korea, has stepped forward the recognize the results of these so-called "referendums"?
I provided only one article about the elections there, but it is well documented from many sources. https://yandex.com/search/?text=donbas+elections+joining+rus...
The results were overwhelmingly in support of joining RF. The ease with which the Russians annexed the region is also evidence of how welcomed they were.
Every election everywhere has challenges. Other than minor complaints, there is no evidence of significant election tampering.
Try finding any evidence that Russia wants to expand its federation into Europe.
Ukraine is in Europe, last we checked, and Putin is openly seeking to expand the Federation's borders there as we speak.
They don't need any more land.
The regime's core delusion is that it needs a "sphere of privileged influence" (in its own words) over former Soviet republics, and Eastern Slavic peoples in particular. And that it has a right to assert control over pretty much any piece of land the Russian Empire has ever sat on for any length of time, as it sees fit.
I think Signal is a silly messaging system if the servers are all centralized enough to be able to be blocked and require a VPN. They forbid federation: https://signal.org/blog/the-ecosystem-is-moving/ . I am surprised that technical people use it; they see that the client and some of the server code is open sourced on GitHub and go all-in on the platform, instead of thinking critically about the actual messaging technology.
Totally pointless messaging platform. Use something real like XMPP.
Yes, _their_ servers. If I can't run a server and have others easily join it in a normal & intended user flow, we're back with the same centralisation of WhatsApp, just with a "source available" coat of paint.
In that respect StackOverflow is probably safe.
1: (Dutch) https://nos.nl/artikel/2532565-met-het-beperken-van-youtube-...