4 ms·

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