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Reddit blocks posting any .ru links
- diimdeep 5y agoHyperbole cancel culture flashmob that only destroys society and delays peace. This planet is completly topsy-turvy.
- rasengan 5y agoThis is how free speech dies.
- lenkite 5y agoWith Thunderous Applause.
- ecf 5y agoIt’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
- scottlawson 5y agoUm it's been four generations since WWII
- ecf 5y ago2022-1945 = 77 Average lifespan in my country = 78.79 years Seems like it’s one generation to me.
- selfhoster11 5y agoA 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.
- throwaway2214 5y ago2022-1945 = 77 people give birth around age of 25 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 there have been 4 generations since ww2
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoFree speech has nothing to do with whether a website chose to join an international sanction. The actual censorship is Putin's 15 year punishment for news he doesn't like. I wish enough of HN understood free speech at a level to pass a test in 8th grade that we would embarrass one another when getting things this wrong. It really hampers our ability to function in the real world, the way we reject any constraint involving text and then say "but muh free speech" This isn't intelligent or correct
- rasengan 5y agoOh, I thought it was the blanket ban on Russian news by the EU.
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoThat's also not censorship. Censorship is when *an individual is told by a government that they may not publish*. A government telling another government that they can't broadcast in the first government's space is something really quite different.
- imwillofficial 5y agoWhen governments + corporations team up, your lines of distinction are meaningless.
- JMS2021 5y agoCorrect. Elon Musk has said he will ignore EU law and not block Russian internet on StarLink.
- veganhouseDJ 5y agoThis is such an insane war on "misinformation". 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."
- qqq111 5y ago
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y agoTruth 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.
- ProjectArcturis 5y agoI'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.
- liopleurodon 5y agoYeah, 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 https://gab.com/RTintl)
- root_axis 5y agoAll user driven content sites censor.
- s9w 5y ago
- 5350-uiop-1130 5y agoright and left are just made up concepts for poor people to fight about this is all about money, like all world conflict. it just shows how globalisation only works if you're subservient to the will of the US.
- timeon 5y agoThis conflict is not about the USA.
- remram 5y agoThis 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. [1]: https://www.zdnet.com/article/internet-service-provider-cogent-cutting-off-access-to-russian-customers/ https://www.zdnet.com/article/internet-service-provider-coge...
- WillPostForFood 5y ago>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.
- netcan 5y agoI disagree. "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.
- loudtieblahblah 5y agothe 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.
- JohnHaugeland 5y agoIn this HN thread, yet another bizarro-land misunderstanding of the basic concept of freedom of speech.
- paulpauper 5y agofree speech is neither free nor speech
- nxm 5y agoPlease elaborate, otherwise the statement above is futile
- conjecTech 5y agoTop comment from an admin: """ 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.
- asjldkfin 5y agoThis is the exact same response you'd get if it had everything to do with censorship.
- rrook 5y agoThis line of reasoning, presented without evidence, can be used to undermine virtually any statement; it doesn't contribute to discourse in any way.
- asjldkfin 5y agoSorry, 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.
- rrook 5y agoThis 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. Do you see?
- asjldkfin 5y agoThe 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.
- perihelions 5y agoWar 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.
- quyleanh 5y agoI 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. Such a crazy time.
- thetinguy 5y agoNo to war is also no to putin’s propaganda
- xdennis 5y agoThis is a ridiculous false equivalence. * Russians are bombing civilians, infrastructure, power plants, &c * We using sanctions and cutting of Russian influence. These are in no way the same, and you can't say we're "spreading feud" when they're giving 15year prison sentences for saying the word "war".
- odessacubbage 5y ago>bombing civilians https://archive.ph/UkIMn https://archive.ph/UkIMn >infrastructure, power plants https://archive.ph/YIxcH https://archive.ph/YIxcH >they're giving 15year prison sentences for saying the word "war" https://balkaninsight.com/2022/03/01/czechia-mulls-penalising-support-of-ukraine-invasion/ https://balkaninsight.com/2022/03/01/czechia-mulls-penalisin... sounds like reddit better start censoring .com/.gov/.us/.cz links
- fourtrees 5y agoYes, 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.
- imwillofficial 5y agoThis 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. A government is not its people.
- 8note 5y agoThe government depends on its people to be able to do things like run a war. You can't cleanly separate the two. the only way this war ends without escalation is when the Russian people convince their government to stop fighting it
- 331c8c71 5y ago> the only way this war ends without escalation is when the Russian people convince their government to stop fighting it It's not happening in weeks to come whatever the west does.
- throwaway22032 5y agoThis is so ridiculous. 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.
- thatwasunusual 5y ago
- 4ggr0 5y agoBlocking .ru URLs is ten times worse than a war and desinformation?
- throwaway22032 5y agoNo, the cumulative impact of attempting to erase the existence of a nuclear state by trying to find a loophole is.
- shukantpal 5y agoBlocking links is not trying to "erase the existence" of a country. That's a particularly foolish comparison.
- throwaway22032 5y ago"Cumulative impact".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- imwillofficial 5y agoThe 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.
- swagasaurus-rex 5y agoWhat about when Putin said Ukraine is run by Nazis and used it as an excuse for invasion?
- imwillofficial 5y agoThere 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.
- Scandiravian 5y agoIs 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
- analogdreams 5y agoWhy don't we just make DNS refuse to resolve the domain while we are at it? This mass censorship is apparently the new hotness.
- mateo1 5y agoThe free and open global communications network we enjoyed is officially being terminated. It was nice that it existed for a while.
- chmod775 5y agoThis is bizarre and doesn't even achieve the stated objectives. The "we must do something!" mentality at work.
- ilrwbwrkhv 5y agoEveryone hops on when the train is in station.
- elinsensible 5y ago
- tsol 5y ago>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
- hasajacyszatan 5y agomaybe it would be better to label and ban the pages of pro-government propaganda
- IYasha 5y ago> First, I cannot stress enough how stupid this decision is. You're right. Absurd.
- isitmadeofglass 5y agoI 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.
- 331c8c71 5y agoI 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.
- faeriechangling 5y agoTwo 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. [1] https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M [2] https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog [3] https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/am https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/am... [4] https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/reddit-bans-links-to-russian-state-media-1235195612/ https://variety.com/2022/digital/news/reddit-bans-links-to-r... [5] https://statdom.ru/tld/ru/report/domainscount/#8:date=20220205-20220305 https://statdom.ru/tld/ru/report/domainscount/#8:date=202202...
- mediumsmart 5y agoOf course they do. https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/05/war-conflict-enemies-of-truth/ https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/05/war-conflict-enemies-o...