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Russians have been living with Putin in charge for the last twenty years. I doubt that anyone immune to the propaganda will suddenly start to believe it, and I

Russians have been living with Putin in charge for the last twenty years. I doubt that anyone immune to the propaganda will suddenly start to believe it, and I also doubt that people that believe the propaganda could have their minds suddenly changed.

notahacker 5y ago
Or put more subtly, the sort of Russian that generally believes Russian media isn't particularly likely to have bought a VPN to access alternative perspectives if only their Visa/Mastercard still worked. The sort of Russian that would have done that is fairly unlikely to believe that the war must be going well because it's even harder for them to access Facebook.
- jolmg 5y ago
  Even if that's the case, it's still not helping.
  - brimble 5y ago
    Either access to the global Internet is not, in fact, economically valuable, or yes, it absolutely would help (in the sense of harming the Russian economy, that is)
    - jolmg 5y ago
      I'm not against harming their economy, but am against harming their access to information. I don't think doing the former necessitates doing the latter. In the cases where they overlap, I think the harm to the economy is negligible.
      - brimble 5y ago
        If the Russian government thought that the parts of the Internet they still allow were any threat, in excess of the economic or strategic benefit it provides, they'd have already cut it off. I think the viability of any kind of Internet-based propaganda war are badly over-estimated by its proponents, especially when the other side gets to filter out entire sites that are inconvenient. It works much better against a foe that's far more open (so, us).
        jolmg 5y ago
        I want to keep open the possibility that the Russian government's ability/competency to censor the internet effectively is what's over-estimated.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    Depends on which scenario you consider more likely: ordinary Russians to turn against their government because they preferred thd relative prosperity and consumerism it brought to the austerity the war brought, or ordinary Russians to turn against the government because having cheerfully believed and consumed state media over foreign alternatives, they'd rush out to buy VPNs on their Mastercards to consume the foreign alternatives as soon as Putin blocked them. I'm going to go out in a limb and suggest the former is more likely. For the vast majority of the information on the internet, Visa/Mastercard is going to be irrelevant to Russians' ability to access alternative perspectives anyway
mindslight 5y ago
It's not a matter of whether propaganda is "believed". The goal of propaganda is not to redefine the truth, but rather to destroy the notion of truth. It's about shifting the Overton window, giving backing to cognitive dissonance, and obscuring the true extent of how bad things are. As such, even those who do not believe it are still affected by its relative quantity versus truthful messages.

notahacker 5y ago

Or put more subtly, the sort of Russian that generally believes Russian media isn't particularly likely to have bought a VPN to access alternative perspectives if only their Visa/Mastercard still worked. The sort of Russian that would have done that is fairly unlikely to believe that the war must be going well because it's even harder for them to access Facebook.

jolmg 5y ago
Even if that's the case, it's still not helping.
- brimble 5y ago
  Either access to the global Internet is not, in fact, economically valuable, or yes, it absolutely would help (in the sense of harming the Russian economy, that is)
  - jolmg 5y ago
    I'm not against harming their economy, but am against harming their access to information. I don't think doing the former necessitates doing the latter. In the cases where they overlap, I think the harm to the economy is negligible.
    - brimble 5y ago
      If the Russian government thought that the parts of the Internet they still allow were any threat, in excess of the economic or strategic benefit it provides, they'd have already cut it off. I think the viability of any kind of Internet-based propaganda war are badly over-estimated by its proponents, especially when the other side gets to filter out entire sites that are inconvenient. It works much better against a foe that's far more open (so, us).
      - jolmg 5y ago
        I want to keep open the possibility that the Russian government's ability/competency to censor the internet effectively is what's over-estimated.
- notahacker 5y ago
  Depends on which scenario you consider more likely: ordinary Russians to turn against their government because they preferred thd relative prosperity and consumerism it brought to the austerity the war brought, or ordinary Russians to turn against the government because having cheerfully believed and consumed state media over foreign alternatives, they'd rush out to buy VPNs on their Mastercards to consume the foreign alternatives as soon as Putin blocked them. I'm going to go out in a limb and suggest the former is more likely. For the vast majority of the information on the internet, Visa/Mastercard is going to be irrelevant to Russians' ability to access alternative perspectives anyway

mindslight 5y ago

It's not a matter of whether propaganda is "believed". The goal of propaganda is not to redefine the truth, but rather to destroy the notion of truth. It's about shifting the Overton window, giving backing to cognitive dissonance, and obscuring the true extent of how bad things are. As such, even those who do not believe it are still affected by its relative quantity versus truthful messages.