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Europe has done the same with Russia. Also, I think a few other Arab countries like Egypt have blocked/banned Al Jazeera.
by angra_mainyu 2y ago
Europe has done the same with Russia.
Also, I think a few other Arab countries like Egypt have blocked/banned Al Jazeera.
- patall 2y agoDo you have examples for Europe blocking Russia? Because all I have seen is DNS providers omitting certain sites (i.e RT), but their apps still work (plus URLs when using other DNS). An nothing of that coming from the nation states as all seems to be due to the activities of private companies doing these things.
- cassianoleal 2y agoAt least in the UK, you used to be able to watch RT on broadcast. Now only the Internet version is accessible, and I think some ISPs DNS block them. Granted, a DNS block is easy to circumvent if you understand it, but most users will still be cut off.
- Scoundreller 2y agoAs a total outlier, RT was paying the cable/sat systems to be carried in US/Canada, instead of the other way around. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/rts-purchase-of-canadian-carriage-would-be-a-non-issue-if-not-for-the-secrecy/article37869704/ https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/rts-purchase-of-cana... https://www.wsj.com/articles/rt-channels-unique-carriage-deals-make-it-difficult-to-drop-in-u-s-1485361056 https://www.wsj.com/articles/rt-channels-unique-carriage-dea... I wonder if other countries were the same.
- TylerE 2y agoThat’s not really an outlier. Common for political networks, religious channels, shopping networks…. Probably more than half the channels on a typical American cable system are paying to be there. Especially the stuff in the basic tiers.
- jimbobthrowawy 2y agoWas it actually broadcast terrestrially? I remember picking it up from Astra2 (the "skytv" satellite) but looking online, it's not transmitted anymore.
- cassianoleal 2y agoI used to watch it on Freeview, picked up via a regular antenna if that's what you mean by "terrestrially".
- jdietrich 2y agoRT, Sputnik and related Russian state media outlets are subject to sanctions in the EU, their broadcast licenses have been revoked and their channels have been removed from terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasts. Their accounts on all major social media platforms are blocked. Their apps are no longer available on the Google or Apple stores. Europe doesn't have a Chinese-style Great Firewall, but EU countries have taken every reasonable step to prevent Russian state media from reaching EU audiences. https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-rt-sputnik-illegal-europe/ https://www.politico.eu/article/russia-rt-sputnik-illegal-eu... https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2022/ofcom-revokes-rt-broadcast-licence https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2022/ofcom-revokes-rt-b... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/01/youtube-tiktok-facebook-state-media-ban/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/01/youtube... https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-google-blocks-rt-sputnik-play-app-store-europe-2022-03-02/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/exclusive-google-blocks-r...
- medo-bear 2y ago> Europe doesn't have a Chinese-style Great Firewall, but EU countries have taken every reasonable step to prevent Russian state media from reaching EU audiences. Because they think the EU audiances are stupid?
- guappa 2y agoBecause they don't like anti-government point of views to become too widespread. In Italy the current defence minister is personally earning considerable amount of money by sending weapons to Ukraine, because he's also an owner and manager of companies that make said weapons. Do you think they'd want to favour open discussions? No. In fact besides RT being banned, they want to be able to block any website, giving providers 30 minutes to implement the ban, no appeal and no oversight from a judge (https://stop-piracy-shield.it/ https://stop-piracy-shield.it/)
- pigpang 2y ago> In Italy the current defence minister is personally earning considerable amount of money by sending weapons to Ukraine, because he's also an owner and manager of companies that make said weapons. FUD is the reason why Russian liars are banned from EU.
- angra_mainyu 2y agort.com and their twitter are blocked. How are you not aware of this? It's been a few years already. The EU ruled on this. https://paste.pics/4b60ebef97d3b7fbb6aba74637c2e818 https://paste.pics/4b60ebef97d3b7fbb6aba74637c2e818 https://paste.pics/0cb2ae98754165dad5cf086e75c4cc31 https://paste.pics/0cb2ae98754165dad5cf086e75c4cc31
- Hock88sdx 2y agoMany using VPN. For example if you set the VPN servers to HK, RT will display as usual. In general I notice my peers will use anti-west countries based servers for censored western news and the reverse for anti-east. Some do use it so intuitively they might not realized RT or any Russian sites blocked. A lot of time I just assume it is due to network outages.
- distances 2y agoI would think most people know about RT blocking because it was widely announced and discussed at the time, and not because they actually tried to access RT.
- jurmous 2y agoI am in the Netherlands and I am able to visit rt.com without VPN.
- AlecSchueler 2y agoNetherlands here also and it's blocked for me.
- orlp 2y agoNot for me.
- sdk77 2y agoMe too. I didn't even know about this blockade. I'm using T-Mobile fiber internet and rt.com loads just fine.
- liopleurodon 2y agoIt's part of the EU sanctions, EU ISPs are required to block certain Russian sites. But they didn't specify how, that's left up to the countries to figure out afaik. But as you say, some of the what has been done barely qualifies. Here's my personal experience with this: Germany does exactly what you describe, the bare minimum to say "we're blocking" --- DNS omitting certain sites. Spain is doing deep packet inspection, blocking DNS requests that lookup RT, so DNS over HTTPS or through a VPN is a must. Additionally, they're also reading the SNI in TLS requests and blocking that way. If you try accessing RT in pure unencrypted HTTP you're get some fortigate blocking message back.
- Maken 2y agoIt is still perfectly possible to access RT from Spain, even using regular ISP DNS servers.
- liopleurodon 2y agoThat's not my experience with Movistar, they are throwing down the gauntlet
- guappa 2y agomullivad has a free to use DNS over https service by the way.
- patall 2y agoThanks, though that specifically why I am questioning that it is the EU in this case. Because rt.com is reachable in Sweden just fine, including sub-sites. Which, to me, says that it must be national sanctions, or at minimum, national lists of what to 'block'.
- dagw 2y agoBecause rt.com is reachable in Sweden just fine, including sub-sites. See discussion further down thread, but basically the block in Sweden seems to be on the ISP level and depends on which ISP you have. I can access rt.com via work wifi, but not not over mobile data via Telia. Another user who has Telia as their home ISP cannot access rt.com from home either.
- mrtksn 2y agoThat's correct and IMHO its the right thing to do when shooting begins because when people shoot each other this is no longer a discussion and the press is part of the warfare. Remember all the Russian media and social media accounts claiming that its American hysteria that they will invade Ukraine? They denied and mocked anyone who claimed that they will invade up until the tanks rolled in. Personally, I'm critical of the Israeli government but I think it's in their right to try to control information flow as they are in process of driving people from their homes and mass killing people in retaliation of a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of over thousand innocent people. I really dislike glorification war and pretending that it has rules or honour or something like that. People are taking lives en masse and its more than normal to try to control the information flow when doing it.
- Loquebantur 2y agoI find it downright perverse to call genocide "retaliatory" and the act of covering it up "normal".
- mrtksn 2y ago[flagged]
- kelnos 2y agoI think the issue is that you are saying things are "normal" without addressing whether or not they are right and good. I would probably agree with you that it's normal for a country at war to want to control information flow. But that's absolutely a bad thing! Obviously not all "information" is created equal: some of it is high-quality and objective, and some of it is lies (and everything in between). I don't trust pretty much any government entity to be objective about these sorts of bans, though. The ultimate consequence of these sorts of things is a poorly-informed, propagandized public.
- ipaddr 2y agoTo parse your statement we need to understand what genocide means to you. For most it means the systemic killing of every person of a certain genetic identity. Is that what you believe is happening or something else? If genocide is illegal than covering up would be the only logical move. Therefore it would be normal.
- ClumsyPilot 2y ago> Europe has done the same with Russia. Not really. Top Russian officials, say Dmitri Medvedev, are still shitposting on twitter: > Macron preparing to go to kyiv? But he's a zoological coward! Most Russian news websites are still up, say vesti.ru And Russia is active participant in a war, while Quatar is not bombing anyone.
- objektif 2y agoAlso many european countries are not actively fighting a war. I do not really think it was the right decision to ban RT what are they scared of?
- riffraff 2y agoThe main difference would be that Al Jazeera is from Qatar and not Gaza, this would be the equivalent of the EU banning Armenia because they are friendly with Russia.
- Al-Khwarizmi 2y ago> Europe has done the same with Russia. Yes. Which I find abhorrent as an European, and has made me realize even more than our countries are much less democratic than we officially paint them as.
- guappa 2y agoNono, it's only undemocratic when china does it. When the italian government wants to be able to block any website immediately and with no appeal, calling it an anti-piracy measure, it's completely fine and democratic.
- pigpang 2y agoExactly. "Foo" is democratic when democratic or non-democratic country does it in a democratic way.
- hardlianotion 2y agoIf you believe that RT is an organisation that is not interested in the truth, but is set up purely to disrupt and disturb, then a government can reasonably want to prevent its operation. Adding plausible noise to information causes people to have to do much more work to discern between what is true and what is not, time that many people do not have. A reluctance to ban a bad-faith organisation is good: a moral society should thoroughly debate why it might undertake a repressive thing. But you cannot wish away the effects of corrosive and coercive behaviour because the act of banning a such an organisation is repressive. A poor but useful analogy is use of violence in society. Violence is a bad thing, but to absolutely forswear it in all situations is something that very few governments will do, for reasons that seem quite justified to me.
- awuji 2y agoThere are two things wrong with this argument. One, it implies that there isn't a better way to deal with an such a malicious organization. And two, it doesn't acknowledge how such a ban creates an obvious opening for abuse. Holding up the classic Western ideals of Democracy and Freedom is hard because it is much deeper than simply giving people the freedom to access all information so they can form their own opinions. It also requires that these people are educated and trained to be competent critical thinkers and be able to intelligently form their own opinions. It holds its citizens and the government to high standards and will collapse if these standards aren't met. Accordingly, better education and trust in citizens is the better solution, not banning. As for the obvious opening for abuse, it doesn't have to be said that every system will eventually be maximally exploited, and creating this opening for exploitation will eventually be exploited as well. It is just a matter of time... Another poor but useful analogy is fast food. Banning bad media is like consuming fast food. It is quick and easy, and "satisfies" the goal within some basic parameters, but it really does more harm than good in the long term.
- hardlianotion 2y agoThe argument in no way implies that there is no other way to deal with malice, only that it is an option. The argument further implies that the decision to censor should not be taken lightly. When censorship is being considered in a democratic society, the decision to do so must be argued and debated. Note that it is perfectly possible to be well-educated and still be taken in by bullshit and false information - it happens all the time. Education is a good, not a nostrum, and durable opponents of truth are also motivated, sophisticated and smart. Democracy is about the means you use to undertake drastic decisions, and in no way rules out the restriction of unseemly behaviour. Maybe explain why my analogy is not useful - I’ll do the same for you. What I initially said did not in any way imply banning should be quick or easy, while “fast food” is not, in itself, bad for you, but a restricted and monotonous diet of anything can well be.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y agoEgypt is a military dictatorship, so it's no surprise when it bans media organizations.