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Twitter restricted in Russia amid conflict with Ukraine

163 points by aix1 5y ago

cbg0 5y ago
Russia turning more and more into North Korea.
- nickpp 5y ago
  The dictator's playbook is always the same...
- dade_ 5y ago
  I think the Soviets wrote the handbook NK uses.
  - hsavit1 5y ago
    Extremely lacking in historical analysis. Putin is not a socialist or a Soviet - in fact Putin is reportedly very anti-socialist - and Russia's aggression has little in common with the tendencies of the Soviet Union.
    - dade_ 5y ago
      Putin was a member of the Soviet KGB. I am saying the Soviet Union methods are at the root of both, also the PRC.
      - nickpp 5y ago
        Also he lived his first 38 years under the Soviets, working in one of their most emblematic institutions, the KGB. He is not only a product of the inhumane ideology that drove the USSR, he embodies it. You can see it in his disregard of human life, in his placing of the crushing powers of the state over individual freedoms. It's also the ideology of the PRC, and NK indeed. It's simple: communism needs dictatorship to survive and it attracts and enables the most powerful dictators: madmen and psychopaths.
    - throwaway48292 5y ago
      The comment you replied to said North Korea not Putin though
      - hsavit1 5y ago
        It was clear to me that the original comment's purpose was to associate North Korea's interest's with that of the Soviet's. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the original commenter was trying to associate Putin's actions with those of North Korea and therefore the Soviet Union.
        nickpp 5y ago
        Both the PRC and NK are the (ideological) children of USSR.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  With the caveat that North Korea's leader appears to be the more sane one at the moment, which is something that I can still hardly believe is true.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - paganel 5y ago
    I used to believe the same thing, or I had started to in the last 24-48 hours, i.e. that Putin is “crazy” and such. Until, by chance, I stumbled on the Wikipedia page [1] of his main ideology from the last 10-15 years, Vladislav Surkov, and noticed a few quotes from an interview he gave in February 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning: > He claimed that "There is no Ukraine", adding that "coercion to fraternal relations by force is the only method that has historically proven its effectiveness in the Ukrainian direction. I do not think that some other will be invented The “there is no Ukraine” quote is exactly what Putin said in the speech he made at the start of the week, the one where he discussed history and the general situation on those lands. Also, mentioning “brotherly violence” as the only solution to the Ukraine situation, two years before this week’s invasion, is highly revelatory. It made me more at ease, to be honest, I realized that Putin is not “crazy”, he’s just following through a system and a doctrine that had been put in place years before. It might be a bad system, a bad doctrine, but we’re not at the mercy of a single person whose mind was negatively affected by the pandemic (as the Western press is sometimes alluding), the invasion doctrine had already been in there for some time, and is not a creation of only Putin the man himself. [1] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov
    - sillysaurusx 5y ago
      The thing is, the only difference between a crazy ideology and one that works is whether it works. The Ukrainians have been independent long enough that "crazy" seems to be a reasonable adjective to apply, for the following reason: Putin seems to think that Ukraine will join Russia, rather than launch a years-long insurgency in the best case (let alone win the war in the worst case, apparently). Ideology only works if you can pull it off. Otherwise, is the world really mistaken for attaching labels like "unhinged"? Almost every fanatic believes they're acting for good reasons. They pretty much have to believe it by definition.
- agumonkey 5y ago
  It's like binge watching 3rd Reich in 10x. False pretense, flash expansionism, bs political communication, cutting information streams.
  - iszomer 5y ago
    I'm inclined to believe that people would opt for condensed versions of history as brief generalities than being aware of the overall context as well as nuances that may have potentially or conveniently ignored for expedience. I know Rep. Dan Crenshaw is unpopular on HN but he recently interviewed [1] Jon Huntsman Jr, the former ambassador to both China and Russia. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1cPSFxW0Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1cPSFxW0Xs
DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
The question has to be asked if Russian State friendly media (like RT.com) which keeps disseminating RU propaganda on twitter, and has been influential in pushing "alternative narratives" needs to be made harder to access for people. There is certainly an asymmetry when RT gets to continue shaping the narrative in the West, while Russians at home are unable to access that same service. The least that should be done is disallowing them from broadcasting as long as Russians are also unable to access services. Twitter labels all tweets as state sponsored already but they should do more. Not giving them a platform in the first place would be a good idea. Requiring the viewing of each and every tweet of these outfits by having to consent would be another hurdle. Make it so hard to engage that users simply won't be bothered to interact or share. I don't have answers other than immediately shutting down these companies posing as journalistic outfits because they aren't journalists when they blatantly do Putin's bidding.
- hans1729 5y ago
  Censorship doesn’t win hearts and minds. If that’s the best we can come up with, we are no better than China - don’t tell me what I’m allowed to see or read online, or make it deliberately unpleasant - those amount to the same. That’s how you get me to antagonize you for the rest of my life. I don’t need corporations or the state to filter data before it gets to me in any way shape or form. They can’t possibly do a good job at it anyway.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    First generation out of Salazar dictatorship. That is not really something that we should go back to.
  - cbg0 5y ago
    This approach works very well for those that are capable of getting their news from multiple sources and are capable of critical thinking, but in many places the majority of the population is not like this. If you look at some interviews of people in some regions of Ukraine and Russia you'll see that folks are convinced of what the fake stories that Russian state media has pushed along the years, namely that Ukraine is being controlled by Nazis. It's not very difficult to see how the same propaganda could spread to other countries quite easily and become a threat to national security - one of the reasons why Moldova blocked off the sputnik.md domain today. It's a touchy subject indeed, but when you have state controlled media that is spewing outright lies, I think countries have an obligation to block off those sources of fake news in order to protect the citizens that are most vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, especially in an age when people believe everything they see on social media.
nomilk 5y ago
If Ukrainian statistics are to believed [1], Russia has lost 3500 troops in the past 2 days. That's almost as many as the US lost in Iraq since 2003. Let that sink in. Another thing, is that reports from Washington Post [2] suggest most of the 102 Russian tanks popped by Ukraine have been T-72's: although modernised, the T-72 is a 48 year old design (!!). What does this say about Putin's plans for soaking up Javelin fire - perhaps he's not wasting his best tanks. Possibly militarily sound, but wow - the human cost.. If this information is correct, it's no wonder Russia is shutting down social media to stem the flow of info back home. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60517447?pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:6feb197c-9473-44eb-a42f-088d9c12d6ee https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60517447?pinned_p... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/24/ukraine-russia-weapons/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/24/...
- pjmlp 5y ago
  As I mentioned in another thread, when leaders no longer ride alongside their officers into the battlefield, this kid of human cost is what happens, decided between a couple of tea cups.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Zelensky is riding alongside his officers into battle.
    - smcl 5y ago
      Right, I don't know a great deal about the guy but his response to a US offer of evacuation was pretty impressive: "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride"
      - aix1 5y ago
        It's also quite incredible to see how _everyone_ has rallied around him, regardless of their political preferences in normal times.
unpopularopp 5y ago
This is something I never get. I go to Youtube I can watch russian and chinese propaganda channels easily, RT, CGTN, Global Times etc. Why does this exist at all? Like why does an american company allow that? Do people in China and Russia can watch US propaganda easily? To me it's just doesn't make sense. ESPECIALLY that feels like Google takes more care about US stuff (see any republican, Trump etc. videos) but hey we don't care about chinese or russian propaganda. Let everyone have free access to those!
- icare_1er 5y ago
  You're right, when I go to Pyong-Yang, I cannot watch CNN. I wonder why we are not doing like Pyong-Yang. And not just for TV !
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - syntaxfree 5y ago
    All things considered NK isn’t doing that well as compared to the US
  - smcl 5y ago
    The person you're replying to mentioned China and Russia - Pyongyang is in North Korea. While neither China nor Russia are particularly free or open, North Korea is on an entirely different level.
- sxg 5y ago
  You’re touching on a huge topic, and I can’t do it justice, but the simplified answer is that blocking voices “fairly” is nearly impossible. If you choose to block some voices, you inevitably have to draw a line regarding what is allowable versus not. But voices don’t exist on a one-dimensional spectrum where you can simply block everything to one side. Someone has to decide what is allowable, but who gets to decide that? Who decides who gets to decide? Regardless of whoever ends up becoming the decision maker, reasonable people will disagree, creating more conflict.
- 5y ago
raverbashing 5y ago
If Putin longed for the long glory days (of decay) of the URSS I think he's getting it. But the fall will last months instead of years Hubris is a great way of losing battles Don't tell the Russians about nitter. Or VPNs. But all you need is one to take things from there and post it on VK
- foverzar 5y ago
  Everyone in Russia already knows how to use VPN, how do you think they access RuTracker? xD
Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
Twitter is blocked in Russia, can confirm. I wonder how long my VPN and general internet connectivity will remain...
- mmastrac 5y ago
  Stay safe. Download some censorship-free mesh networking communication apps to organize protests.
  - JumpCrisscross 5y ago
    > Download some censorship-free mesh networking communication apps to organize protests Russia is sadly beyond resolution through protest. Join a resistance or get out, unfortunately. It won’t be long before the second becomes impossible.
    - hutzlibu 5y ago
      Do you have first hand information from inside russia? As far as I know, Putin is absolutely scared of a big scale protest. Which is why he reacted so harsh against the anti war protests so far. And the russian system is still based on elections(with observers). Where fraud might happen, but if he loses popular support(which he still has), he will eventually loose the elections.
      - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
        That actually make me chuckle. I do actually have first-hand information from inside Russia. Election system is completely controlled by the government. Opposition members can't even register as a candidate, they are just rejected. And if that doesn't help, the well oiled machine of election fraud ensures that the 'right' candidate wins. As for 'big scale protest', Putin has enormous internal army consisting of riot police, RosGuardia, and so-called titushkis, a class of combatants with criminal backgrounds. And he has tanks, armoured vehicles and firearms, which he wouldn't hesitate to use against protesters. Good luck protesting against all of that.
ceilingcorner 5y ago
Inevitable and predictable consequence after western social media companies facilitated political change in the late 2000s and early 2010s. If you care about an open internet, you should be against banning any sort of media, no matter how much The NY Times calls it misinformation.
politelemon 5y ago
> “So you have this kind of bottom-up movement that happened in the ‘90s, with thousands of local ISPs routing these small cities - for example, it's very normal in Russia to have an ISP just for a city of 50,000 inhabitants,” Limonier said. As of 2015, there were 15,433 ISPs registered with the Russian accounting chamber. It was quite common in several countries in and around the Middle East, SE/E Asia, to have not just ISPs for small towns but several ISPs in medium towns that appeared and disappeared, for myriad reasons like finances or cat and mouse games with authorities. Oftentimes the only way to know which latest, working ISP to use was through word of mouth. It gave the early days of the internet an additional unfettered, unexplored kind of feeling.
- paganel 5y ago
  Indeed, those were excellent times. I can confirm that the same was happening in Romania until the mid- to late-2000s.
capableweb 5y ago
The article seems to hint that the block is made by Russian government, not from Twitter themselves, is there any way of confirming this either way? The title here on HN is a bit unclear as well if the block is made by Twitter or if the block is made by Russia.
- aix1 5y ago
  This doesn't directly answer your question, but yesterday Roskomnadzor[1] has announced that they would "partially block" Facebook in Russia [2, 3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_for_Supervision_of_Communications,_Information_Technology_and_Mass_Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_for_Supervisio... [2] https://www.rbc.ru/politics/25/02/2022/6219031a9a7947cb20dce884 https://www.rbc.ru/politics/25/02/2022/6219031a9a7947cb20dce... [3] I was going to provide a direct link but Roskomnadzor's site appears to be down at the moment... lol
- HlessClaudesman 5y ago
  Russian authorities, they realise how badly it is going, scared of an informed populace.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    > scared of an informed populace So why block twitter?
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      Haha, indeed. I do not get informed on either Twitter or Facebook. Everyone is an expert there in everything, and 99% is bullshit.
      - lifty 5y ago
        Twitter has been a great source of information during this invasion. There are a few lists of reliable journalists that produce content around the clock.
paganel 5y ago
To be expected, the West has already started doing the same thing right now to websites that are seen as “promoting Russian propaganda” or such. There’s an Internet Wall that is being hastily put in place right at this moment, it’s quite interesting if you try to look at it from a neutral position.
- the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
  What precisely is “the west” doing with the Internet in response to this conflict right now?
  - paganel 5y ago
    A couple of websites that were seen as relaying Russian propaganda have been taken down in Moldova, whose president is a darling of the Western regimes. Those websites (in Romanian) were mainly targeting the Romanian audience (from where I’m from), a NATO and EU member. Plus, at a more general level there’s the whole debacle of blocking RT (I know about the United Kingdom, maybe Germany, also, not sure).
- city17 5y ago
  False equivalence. There's a big difference between blocking state-owned media that are direct propaganda tools (e.g. RT, although I don't think they're actually being blocked anyway) and blocking a general social media platform that has opinions from all sides on it.
  - foverzar 5y ago
    I don't suppose the structural equivalence actually makes sence here. In practice, there is simply no need to block russian social media as no one actually cares about russian social media, beside Russians and people from other CIS countries, like Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine (AFAIK, Ukraine actually blocks quite a lot of large ru-net sites, both social media and news outlets). It would be an honest comparisson if e.g. Telegram gets more popular in the West and there would be actual temptation to pressure it. We actually already see the first signs of it in Germany, where anti-lockdown protestors are using Telegram and the government doesn't like it. And remember what had happened to TikTok as soon as it became massively popular? It was forced to surrender and get sold without a second thought.
cloutchaser 5y ago
I guess it's now even more ironic that there are no restrictions on Twitter accounts from Russian officials, yet Donald Trump is still banned.
iso1210 5y ago
I have two ISPs in Moscow, loading https://twitter.com/ https://twitter.com/ times out on one, and gets an RST on another. https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ is fine on both. nitter.net works fine for now.
- hans1729 5y ago
  >https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ is fine on both. I would imagine that the russian government is careful in picking their fights right now. Provoking the it-security-crowd (both locally and abroad) is a game-theoretical no-no :-)
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Blocking HN has a certainty of low gains, with probably low costs but a small possibility of escalating costs up to an unknown high amount. Yet, the most probable explanation is that nobody relevant even knows about the site to decide to block it.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    news.ycombinator.com reliably works in China, sometimes it feels like the only https site that does :D
    - kurthr 5y ago
      Oh, that is hilarious! Partially, it's due to the low bandwidth required, but I often used it in the 2010s to gauge whether I had any western secure connectivity (e.g. VPN not working in central China) so I'm glad it's still true.
      - 3pt14159 5y ago
        Trying to censor software folks is going to cost way more than it is worth. Better to easily surveil than to deny.
  - qiskit 5y ago
foverzar 5y ago
Not confirmed. Both mobile internet (yota/megafon) and home internet (mosnet) can access twitter just fine without any VPN. Probably a technical issue. Also, netblocks seems to make false assumptions regarding censorship. Funny thing is that they seem to do it on purpose, as it is evident from the article that they are aware of Roskomnadzor. Unless there is an order from RKN, claiming that each technical issue is an act of censorship is misinformation. This is very important to remember as these issues will be more common right now, due to ru-net being under heavy load, caused by both heavy internal consumption and external DDoS attacks.
YaBomm 5y ago
antattack 5y ago
Title should be: Twitter restricted in Russia amid invasion of Ukraine. What's happening is far from 'conflict'.
- MereInterest 5y ago
  Agreed entirely. "Conflict with" implies equivalent circumstances between Russia and Ukraine, which is an inappropriate implication for an unprovoked war of aggression.
  - binarray2000 5y ago
    Following your logic, what USA and its vassals have done to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia... is "an unprovoked war of aggression".
    - Spivak 5y ago
      I think this crowd would 100% agree with that, I sure do.
    - reidjs 5y ago
      Without a doubt
  - jollybean 5y ago
    'Conflict' just means 'conflict'. It does not mean equivalent circumstances. In this instance, to be a bit more objective about the situation, the choice of 'conflict' is reasonable. For news headlines, 'Russian Invasion' is more appropriate, because it does communicate what is happening more appropriately. FYI Russian government is censoring everything everywhere so as to not allow the words 'invasion', 'incursion' or 'war' (!?!?) to be used to describe the situation. I mean, seriously ... it's not a 'war' ... It's like Russia is borrowing from it's Soviet era days. When I was a kid that was comedy gold ...
  - w0de0 5y ago
    The phrase is one sprung of the zeitgeist of euphemistic war-words conceived in the communion of cable news and State Department press briefings. This trend of imprecision has been nurtured by the moral cognitive dissonance that was inherent to American reporting on our two recent Eurasian wars. At pains to make a distinction between classical nation-state war and our adventurism, we merely achieved a degradation in the shared meaning of “war,” “invasion,” etc. This is very much the crux of the vulnerability Russian innovation in information war seeks to exploit.
VincentEvans 5y ago
I go to sleep every day hoping for Western/NATO military action against Russian military units in Ukraine. Specifically, a large scale aerial operation to annihilate concentrations of Russian forces inflicting maximum and unsustainable casualties forcing Russian withdrawal. There’s a distinction between attacking Russia and stoping an invasion by eliminating military forces of the aggressor in the sovereign territory of another country.
- sneak 5y ago
  Putin mentioned nuclear weapons specifically when publicly warning specifically against the type of interference you describe. There is a nonzero chance that the endgame of the decision you hope for results in gigadeaths within ten weeks. Calling such a bluff risks the entire human civilization.
  - VincentEvans 5y ago
    I don’t disagree, but I’ll refer you to this video from the show “Yes, prime minister” on the subject of salami tactics and nuclear deterrent: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 Where is the red line? I’ve just read in the news that Kadyrov’s Chechen forces of islamist murderers are going to be deploying to Ukraine to assist Russian forces. Should the West continue to wait and see?
    - jltsiren 5y ago
      Isn't that just Cold War 101? Both sides are supposed to know where the other side's red line is. And both sides are supposed to avoid creating ambiguous situations, where the other side may no longer know the red line. If the enemy does not know your red line, it's your fault. And if you don't know it yourself, your existence may be enough to start a nuclear war.
  - corndoge 5y ago
    > Putin mentioned nuclear weapons specifically when publicly warning specifically against the type of interference you describe Can you provide a reference for that? I wasn't aware of this
newbamboo 5y ago
They should use an app that respects free speech like parlor or gab or whatever the freedom respecting Twitter alternative of the moment happens to be. Twitter is far from “open” and so blocking it is sort of redundant; it’s already tightly restricted. It’s not like they are blocking the free press.
aix1 5y ago
Confirmed by Twitter: > We’re aware that Twitter is being restricted for some people in Russia and are working to keep our service safe and accessible. https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1497615384169566215 https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/149761538416956621...

163 points by aix1 5y ago

cbg0 5y ago

Russia turning more and more into North Korea.

nickpp 5y ago
The dictator's playbook is always the same...
dade_ 5y ago
I think the Soviets wrote the handbook NK uses.
- hsavit1 5y ago
  Extremely lacking in historical analysis. Putin is not a socialist or a Soviet - in fact Putin is reportedly very anti-socialist - and Russia's aggression has little in common with the tendencies of the Soviet Union.
  - dade_ 5y ago
    Putin was a member of the Soviet KGB. I am saying the Soviet Union methods are at the root of both, also the PRC.
    - nickpp 5y ago
      Also he lived his first 38 years under the Soviets, working in one of their most emblematic institutions, the KGB. He is not only a product of the inhumane ideology that drove the USSR, he embodies it. You can see it in his disregard of human life, in his placing of the crushing powers of the state over individual freedoms. It's also the ideology of the PRC, and NK indeed. It's simple: communism needs dictatorship to survive and it attracts and enables the most powerful dictators: madmen and psychopaths.
  - throwaway48292 5y ago
    The comment you replied to said North Korea not Putin though
    - hsavit1 5y ago
      It was clear to me that the original comment's purpose was to associate North Korea's interest's with that of the Soviet's. It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that the original commenter was trying to associate Putin's actions with those of North Korea and therefore the Soviet Union.
      - nickpp 5y ago
        Both the PRC and NK are the (ideological) children of USSR.
jacquesm 5y ago
With the caveat that North Korea's leader appears to be the more sane one at the moment, which is something that I can still hardly believe is true.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- paganel 5y ago
  I used to believe the same thing, or I had started to in the last 24-48 hours, i.e. that Putin is “crazy” and such. Until, by chance, I stumbled on the Wikipedia page [1] of his main ideology from the last 10-15 years, Vladislav Surkov, and noticed a few quotes from an interview he gave in February 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning: > He claimed that "There is no Ukraine", adding that "coercion to fraternal relations by force is the only method that has historically proven its effectiveness in the Ukrainian direction. I do not think that some other will be invented The “there is no Ukraine” quote is exactly what Putin said in the speech he made at the start of the week, the one where he discussed history and the general situation on those lands. Also, mentioning “brotherly violence” as the only solution to the Ukraine situation, two years before this week’s invasion, is highly revelatory. It made me more at ease, to be honest, I realized that Putin is not “crazy”, he’s just following through a system and a doctrine that had been put in place years before. It might be a bad system, a bad doctrine, but we’re not at the mercy of a single person whose mind was negatively affected by the pandemic (as the Western press is sometimes alluding), the invasion doctrine had already been in there for some time, and is not a creation of only Putin the man himself. [1] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    The thing is, the only difference between a crazy ideology and one that works is whether it works. The Ukrainians have been independent long enough that "crazy" seems to be a reasonable adjective to apply, for the following reason: Putin seems to think that Ukraine will join Russia, rather than launch a years-long insurgency in the best case (let alone win the war in the worst case, apparently). Ideology only works if you can pull it off. Otherwise, is the world really mistaken for attaching labels like "unhinged"? Almost every fanatic believes they're acting for good reasons. They pretty much have to believe it by definition.
agumonkey 5y ago
It's like binge watching 3rd Reich in 10x. False pretense, flash expansionism, bs political communication, cutting information streams.
- iszomer 5y ago
  I'm inclined to believe that people would opt for condensed versions of history as brief generalities than being aware of the overall context as well as nuances that may have potentially or conveniently ignored for expedience. I know Rep. Dan Crenshaw is unpopular on HN but he recently interviewed [1] Jon Huntsman Jr, the former ambassador to both China and Russia. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1cPSFxW0Xs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1cPSFxW0Xs

DyslexicAtheist 5y ago

The question has to be asked if Russian State friendly media (like RT.com) which keeps disseminating RU propaganda on twitter, and has been influential in pushing "alternative narratives" needs to be made harder to access for people. There is certainly an asymmetry when RT gets to continue shaping the narrative in the West, while Russians at home are unable to access that same service. The least that should be done is disallowing them from broadcasting as long as Russians are also unable to access services. Twitter labels all tweets as state sponsored already but they should do more. Not giving them a platform in the first place would be a good idea. Requiring the viewing of each and every tweet of these outfits by having to consent would be another hurdle. Make it so hard to engage that users simply won't be bothered to interact or share. I don't have answers other than immediately shutting down these companies posing as journalistic outfits because they aren't journalists when they blatantly do Putin's bidding.

hans1729 5y ago
Censorship doesn’t win hearts and minds. If that’s the best we can come up with, we are no better than China - don’t tell me what I’m allowed to see or read online, or make it deliberately unpleasant - those amount to the same. That’s how you get me to antagonize you for the rest of my life. I don’t need corporations or the state to filter data before it gets to me in any way shape or form. They can’t possibly do a good job at it anyway.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  First generation out of Salazar dictatorship. That is not really something that we should go back to.
- cbg0 5y ago
  This approach works very well for those that are capable of getting their news from multiple sources and are capable of critical thinking, but in many places the majority of the population is not like this. If you look at some interviews of people in some regions of Ukraine and Russia you'll see that folks are convinced of what the fake stories that Russian state media has pushed along the years, namely that Ukraine is being controlled by Nazis. It's not very difficult to see how the same propaganda could spread to other countries quite easily and become a threat to national security - one of the reasons why Moldova blocked off the sputnik.md domain today. It's a touchy subject indeed, but when you have state controlled media that is spewing outright lies, I think countries have an obligation to block off those sources of fake news in order to protect the citizens that are most vulnerable to this sort of manipulation, especially in an age when people believe everything they see on social media.

nomilk 5y ago

If Ukrainian statistics are to believed [1], Russia has lost 3500 troops in the past 2 days. That's almost as many as the US lost in Iraq since 2003. Let that sink in. Another thing, is that reports from Washington Post [2] suggest most of the 102 Russian tanks popped by Ukraine have been T-72's: although modernised, the T-72 is a 48 year old design (!!). What does this say about Putin's plans for soaking up Javelin fire - perhaps he's not wasting his best tanks. Possibly militarily sound, but wow - the human cost.. If this information is correct, it's no wonder Russia is shutting down social media to stem the flow of info back home. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60517447?pinned_post_locator=urn:asset:6feb197c-9473-44eb-a42f-088d9c12d6ee https://www.bbc.com/news/live/world-europe-60517447?pinned_p... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/24/ukraine-russia-weapons/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/02/24/...

pjmlp 5y ago
As I mentioned in another thread, when leaders no longer ride alongside their officers into the battlefield, this kid of human cost is what happens, decided between a couple of tea cups.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Zelensky is riding alongside his officers into battle.
  - smcl 5y ago
    Right, I don't know a great deal about the guy but his response to a US offer of evacuation was pretty impressive: "The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride"
    - aix1 5y ago
      It's also quite incredible to see how _everyone_ has rallied around him, regardless of their political preferences in normal times.

unpopularopp 5y ago

This is something I never get. I go to Youtube I can watch russian and chinese propaganda channels easily, RT, CGTN, Global Times etc. Why does this exist at all? Like why does an american company allow that? Do people in China and Russia can watch US propaganda easily? To me it's just doesn't make sense. ESPECIALLY that feels like Google takes more care about US stuff (see any republican, Trump etc. videos) but hey we don't care about chinese or russian propaganda. Let everyone have free access to those!

icare_1er 5y ago
You're right, when I go to Pyong-Yang, I cannot watch CNN. I wonder why we are not doing like Pyong-Yang. And not just for TV !
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- syntaxfree 5y ago
  All things considered NK isn’t doing that well as compared to the US
- smcl 5y ago
  The person you're replying to mentioned China and Russia - Pyongyang is in North Korea. While neither China nor Russia are particularly free or open, North Korea is on an entirely different level.
sxg 5y ago
You’re touching on a huge topic, and I can’t do it justice, but the simplified answer is that blocking voices “fairly” is nearly impossible. If you choose to block some voices, you inevitably have to draw a line regarding what is allowable versus not. But voices don’t exist on a one-dimensional spectrum where you can simply block everything to one side. Someone has to decide what is allowable, but who gets to decide that? Who decides who gets to decide? Regardless of whoever ends up becoming the decision maker, reasonable people will disagree, creating more conflict.
5y ago

raverbashing 5y ago

If Putin longed for the long glory days (of decay) of the URSS I think he's getting it. But the fall will last months instead of years Hubris is a great way of losing battles Don't tell the Russians about nitter. Or VPNs. But all you need is one to take things from there and post it on VK

foverzar 5y ago
Everyone in Russia already knows how to use VPN, how do you think they access RuTracker? xD

Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago

Twitter is blocked in Russia, can confirm. I wonder how long my VPN and general internet connectivity will remain...

mmastrac 5y ago
Stay safe. Download some censorship-free mesh networking communication apps to organize protests.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago
  > Download some censorship-free mesh networking communication apps to organize protests Russia is sadly beyond resolution through protest. Join a resistance or get out, unfortunately. It won’t be long before the second becomes impossible.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    Do you have first hand information from inside russia? As far as I know, Putin is absolutely scared of a big scale protest. Which is why he reacted so harsh against the anti war protests so far. And the russian system is still based on elections(with observers). Where fraud might happen, but if he loses popular support(which he still has), he will eventually loose the elections.
    - Andrew_nenakhov 5y ago
      That actually make me chuckle. I do actually have first-hand information from inside Russia. Election system is completely controlled by the government. Opposition members can't even register as a candidate, they are just rejected. And if that doesn't help, the well oiled machine of election fraud ensures that the 'right' candidate wins. As for 'big scale protest', Putin has enormous internal army consisting of riot police, RosGuardia, and so-called titushkis, a class of combatants with criminal backgrounds. And he has tanks, armoured vehicles and firearms, which he wouldn't hesitate to use against protesters. Good luck protesting against all of that.

ceilingcorner 5y ago

Inevitable and predictable consequence after western social media companies facilitated political change in the late 2000s and early 2010s. If you care about an open internet, you should be against banning any sort of media, no matter how much The NY Times calls it misinformation.

politelemon 5y ago

> “So you have this kind of bottom-up movement that happened in the ‘90s, with thousands of local ISPs routing these small cities - for example, it's very normal in Russia to have an ISP just for a city of 50,000 inhabitants,” Limonier said. As of 2015, there were 15,433 ISPs registered with the Russian accounting chamber. It was quite common in several countries in and around the Middle East, SE/E Asia, to have not just ISPs for small towns but several ISPs in medium towns that appeared and disappeared, for myriad reasons like finances or cat and mouse games with authorities. Oftentimes the only way to know which latest, working ISP to use was through word of mouth. It gave the early days of the internet an additional unfettered, unexplored kind of feeling.

paganel 5y ago
Indeed, those were excellent times. I can confirm that the same was happening in Romania until the mid- to late-2000s.

capableweb 5y ago

The article seems to hint that the block is made by Russian government, not from Twitter themselves, is there any way of confirming this either way? The title here on HN is a bit unclear as well if the block is made by Twitter or if the block is made by Russia.

aix1 5y ago
This doesn't directly answer your question, but yesterday Roskomnadzor[1] has announced that they would "partially block" Facebook in Russia [2, 3]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_for_Supervision_of_Communications,_Information_Technology_and_Mass_Media https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_for_Supervisio... [2] https://www.rbc.ru/politics/25/02/2022/6219031a9a7947cb20dce884 https://www.rbc.ru/politics/25/02/2022/6219031a9a7947cb20dce... [3] I was going to provide a direct link but Roskomnadzor's site appears to be down at the moment... lol
HlessClaudesman 5y ago
Russian authorities, they realise how badly it is going, scared of an informed populace.
- iso1210 5y ago
  > scared of an informed populace So why block twitter?
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    Haha, indeed. I do not get informed on either Twitter or Facebook. Everyone is an expert there in everything, and 99% is bullshit.
    - lifty 5y ago
      Twitter has been a great source of information during this invasion. There are a few lists of reliable journalists that produce content around the clock.

paganel 5y ago

To be expected, the West has already started doing the same thing right now to websites that are seen as “promoting Russian propaganda” or such. There’s an Internet Wall that is being hastily put in place right at this moment, it’s quite interesting if you try to look at it from a neutral position.

the_mitsuhiko 5y ago
What precisely is “the west” doing with the Internet in response to this conflict right now?
- paganel 5y ago
  A couple of websites that were seen as relaying Russian propaganda have been taken down in Moldova, whose president is a darling of the Western regimes. Those websites (in Romanian) were mainly targeting the Romanian audience (from where I’m from), a NATO and EU member. Plus, at a more general level there’s the whole debacle of blocking RT (I know about the United Kingdom, maybe Germany, also, not sure).
city17 5y ago
False equivalence. There's a big difference between blocking state-owned media that are direct propaganda tools (e.g. RT, although I don't think they're actually being blocked anyway) and blocking a general social media platform that has opinions from all sides on it.
- foverzar 5y ago
  I don't suppose the structural equivalence actually makes sence here. In practice, there is simply no need to block russian social media as no one actually cares about russian social media, beside Russians and people from other CIS countries, like Belarus, Kazakhstan or Ukraine (AFAIK, Ukraine actually blocks quite a lot of large ru-net sites, both social media and news outlets). It would be an honest comparisson if e.g. Telegram gets more popular in the West and there would be actual temptation to pressure it. We actually already see the first signs of it in Germany, where anti-lockdown protestors are using Telegram and the government doesn't like it. And remember what had happened to TikTok as soon as it became massively popular? It was forced to surrender and get sold without a second thought.

cloutchaser 5y ago

I guess it's now even more ironic that there are no restrictions on Twitter accounts from Russian officials, yet Donald Trump is still banned.

iso1210 5y ago

I have two ISPs in Moscow, loading https://twitter.com/ https://twitter.com/ times out on one, and gets an RST on another. https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ is fine on both. nitter.net works fine for now.

hans1729 5y ago
>https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://news.ycombinator.com/ is fine on both. I would imagine that the russian government is careful in picking their fights right now. Provoking the it-security-crowd (both locally and abroad) is a game-theoretical no-no :-)
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Blocking HN has a certainty of low gains, with probably low costs but a small possibility of escalating costs up to an unknown high amount. Yet, the most probable explanation is that nobody relevant even knows about the site to decide to block it.
- iso1210 5y ago
  news.ycombinator.com reliably works in China, sometimes it feels like the only https site that does :D
  - kurthr 5y ago
    Oh, that is hilarious! Partially, it's due to the low bandwidth required, but I often used it in the 2010s to gauge whether I had any western secure connectivity (e.g. VPN not working in central China) so I'm glad it's still true.
    - 3pt14159 5y ago
      Trying to censor software folks is going to cost way more than it is worth. Better to easily surveil than to deny.
- qiskit 5y ago

foverzar 5y ago

Not confirmed. Both mobile internet (yota/megafon) and home internet (mosnet) can access twitter just fine without any VPN. Probably a technical issue. Also, netblocks seems to make false assumptions regarding censorship. Funny thing is that they seem to do it on purpose, as it is evident from the article that they are aware of Roskomnadzor. Unless there is an order from RKN, claiming that each technical issue is an act of censorship is misinformation. This is very important to remember as these issues will be more common right now, due to ru-net being under heavy load, caused by both heavy internal consumption and external DDoS attacks.

YaBomm 5y ago

antattack 5y ago

Title should be: Twitter restricted in Russia amid invasion of Ukraine. What's happening is far from 'conflict'.

MereInterest 5y ago
Agreed entirely. "Conflict with" implies equivalent circumstances between Russia and Ukraine, which is an inappropriate implication for an unprovoked war of aggression.
- binarray2000 5y ago
  Following your logic, what USA and its vassals have done to Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Serbia... is "an unprovoked war of aggression".
  - Spivak 5y ago
    I think this crowd would 100% agree with that, I sure do.
  - reidjs 5y ago
    Without a doubt
- jollybean 5y ago
  'Conflict' just means 'conflict'. It does not mean equivalent circumstances. In this instance, to be a bit more objective about the situation, the choice of 'conflict' is reasonable. For news headlines, 'Russian Invasion' is more appropriate, because it does communicate what is happening more appropriately. FYI Russian government is censoring everything everywhere so as to not allow the words 'invasion', 'incursion' or 'war' (!?!?) to be used to describe the situation. I mean, seriously ... it's not a 'war' ... It's like Russia is borrowing from it's Soviet era days. When I was a kid that was comedy gold ...
- w0de0 5y ago
  The phrase is one sprung of the zeitgeist of euphemistic war-words conceived in the communion of cable news and State Department press briefings. This trend of imprecision has been nurtured by the moral cognitive dissonance that was inherent to American reporting on our two recent Eurasian wars. At pains to make a distinction between classical nation-state war and our adventurism, we merely achieved a degradation in the shared meaning of “war,” “invasion,” etc. This is very much the crux of the vulnerability Russian innovation in information war seeks to exploit.

VincentEvans 5y ago

I go to sleep every day hoping for Western/NATO military action against Russian military units in Ukraine. Specifically, a large scale aerial operation to annihilate concentrations of Russian forces inflicting maximum and unsustainable casualties forcing Russian withdrawal. There’s a distinction between attacking Russia and stoping an invasion by eliminating military forces of the aggressor in the sovereign territory of another country.

sneak 5y ago
Putin mentioned nuclear weapons specifically when publicly warning specifically against the type of interference you describe. There is a nonzero chance that the endgame of the decision you hope for results in gigadeaths within ten weeks. Calling such a bluff risks the entire human civilization.
- VincentEvans 5y ago
  I don’t disagree, but I’ll refer you to this video from the show “Yes, prime minister” on the subject of salami tactics and nuclear deterrent: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o861Ka9TtT4 Where is the red line? I’ve just read in the news that Kadyrov’s Chechen forces of islamist murderers are going to be deploying to Ukraine to assist Russian forces. Should the West continue to wait and see?
  - jltsiren 5y ago
    Isn't that just Cold War 101? Both sides are supposed to know where the other side's red line is. And both sides are supposed to avoid creating ambiguous situations, where the other side may no longer know the red line. If the enemy does not know your red line, it's your fault. And if you don't know it yourself, your existence may be enough to start a nuclear war.
- corndoge 5y ago
  > Putin mentioned nuclear weapons specifically when publicly warning specifically against the type of interference you describe Can you provide a reference for that? I wasn't aware of this

newbamboo 5y ago

They should use an app that respects free speech like parlor or gab or whatever the freedom respecting Twitter alternative of the moment happens to be. Twitter is far from “open” and so blocking it is sort of redundant; it’s already tightly restricted. It’s not like they are blocking the free press.

aix1 5y ago

Confirmed by Twitter: > We’re aware that Twitter is being restricted for some people in Russia and are working to keep our service safe and accessible. https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/1497615384169566215 https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport/status/149761538416956621...