4 ms·

You’re right. I guess I am. I’m pretty happy RT is blocked.

by mtsr 1y ago

jddj 1y ago
[Editing this while I still can as although I think it's a reasonable discussion I tend to regret getting too much into politics here.]
- qwertox 1y ago
  It's like handing knives out on a playground. rt.com is handing out propaganda which is meant to influence those who are already distrustful of mainstream institutions.
jstanley 1y ago
Why?
- mtsr 1y ago
  Because it’s turning out that too many people are susceptible to (this specific, but also other) propaganda.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - Amezarak 1y ago
    If you think the masses are too susceptible to unapproved propaganda to the extent we have to censor it, it’s not clear to me that you can consistently believe democracy should be your form of government, as opposed to some sort of rule by experts/the rich/the educated/aristocrats/something else. It’s effectively saying the masses get a choice unless it’s the wrong choice. I believe in democracy. If people want to listen to ridiculous and false Russian propaganda or support Russia against Ukraine they should be able to without hindrance, even if their politicians or the better informed don’t like it. It’s their job to persuade their fellows. They shouldn’t get to declare their beliefs are right and beyond democratic contestation. Sometimes democracies make really bad decisions. Alciabiades conned the Athenians into the disastrous Sicilian Expedition. That’s the tradeoff you get for having a democracy. Declaring some subjects out of bounds is taking away democracy and installing something else instead, with those tradeoffs, that we as a society decided we weren’t going to make, without consensus.
    - mtsr 1y ago
      Some people mainly come to political positions for emotional reasons rather than substantive ones. These people are generally easy to reach for populists and propagandists. Many of the real problems in society, unfortunately, have no easy solutions and require very substantive evaluation, weighing expert opinions, etc. In the current environment it has become very hard to get a lot of people to even consider these or, if they want, elect someone to do it in their stead. TLDR: populism + propaganda causes significant dysfunction in democracies, especially ones that aren’t winner-takes-all.
      - Amezarak 1y ago
        None of these problems are new. The problems have been well-understood since the founding of all Western democracies and we accepted that trade off, as we decided the alternative systems were all worse. You can find this very debate in newspapers and CC notes (in America)at the time, about “false rumors” stirred up by “designing men.” These are all the exact same arguments made by regimes like the CCP as to why their authoritarian methods are necessary. It’s all for the public order and the public good as unfortunately, many people are stirred up even against their own interest by meddlers, demagogues, and foreign interests. Fortunately, the CCP knows better, as the Party makes sure that the experts are making decisions based on all the data. I would prefer to live in a democracy, and it astounds me to see people in the West repeating word for word what Russians and Chinese regime apologists say about their governments, all while explaining it’s all necessary to protect democracy.
      - rdm_blackhole 1y ago
        > Some people mainly come to political positions for emotional reasons rather than substantive ones As opposed to your positions. The masses, well, they think wrong, but you, you thought long and hard about everything and you came to the right conclusions. What's next? Give the right to vote only to the "right" people? After all, if you can't trust the judgment of the masses because their views are based mainly on emotional reasons then surely you don't think they should have a say in how their country should be run?
  - rdm_blackhole 1y ago
    How convenient. This is the same argument as for encryption. You can't have encryption only for the good guys and not for the criminals. You either have encryption that protects everyone including criminals or you have no encryption. In this case, you can't have free speech while advocating for censorship against what you consider to be propaganda. Either everyone has the right to express themselves, including pro war lunatics or you right to free speech will eventually go extinct because then it's only a matter of time before someone else will use the same argument to start censoring a topic or an idea that you care about and they will do it the with the same zeal as you when you agreed to censor RT. Yet despite this fact that has been proven time and time again, here we are in 2025 with people like you who applaud censorship.
- imcritic 1y ago
  [flagged]

You’re right. I guess I am. I’m pretty happy RT is blocked.

by mtsr 1y ago

You’re right. I guess I am. I’m pretty happy RT is blocked.

jddj 1y ago

[Editing this while I still can as although I think it's a reasonable discussion I tend to regret getting too much into politics here.]

qwertox 1y ago
It's like handing knives out on a playground. rt.com is handing out propaganda which is meant to influence those who are already distrustful of mainstream institutions.

jstanley 1y ago

Why?

mtsr 1y ago
Because it’s turning out that too many people are susceptible to (this specific, but also other) propaganda.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- Amezarak 1y ago
  If you think the masses are too susceptible to unapproved propaganda to the extent we have to censor it, it’s not clear to me that you can consistently believe democracy should be your form of government, as opposed to some sort of rule by experts/the rich/the educated/aristocrats/something else. It’s effectively saying the masses get a choice unless it’s the wrong choice. I believe in democracy. If people want to listen to ridiculous and false Russian propaganda or support Russia against Ukraine they should be able to without hindrance, even if their politicians or the better informed don’t like it. It’s their job to persuade their fellows. They shouldn’t get to declare their beliefs are right and beyond democratic contestation. Sometimes democracies make really bad decisions. Alciabiades conned the Athenians into the disastrous Sicilian Expedition. That’s the tradeoff you get for having a democracy. Declaring some subjects out of bounds is taking away democracy and installing something else instead, with those tradeoffs, that we as a society decided we weren’t going to make, without consensus.
  - mtsr 1y ago
    Some people mainly come to political positions for emotional reasons rather than substantive ones. These people are generally easy to reach for populists and propagandists. Many of the real problems in society, unfortunately, have no easy solutions and require very substantive evaluation, weighing expert opinions, etc. In the current environment it has become very hard to get a lot of people to even consider these or, if they want, elect someone to do it in their stead. TLDR: populism + propaganda causes significant dysfunction in democracies, especially ones that aren’t winner-takes-all.
    - Amezarak 1y ago
      None of these problems are new. The problems have been well-understood since the founding of all Western democracies and we accepted that trade off, as we decided the alternative systems were all worse. You can find this very debate in newspapers and CC notes (in America)at the time, about “false rumors” stirred up by “designing men.” These are all the exact same arguments made by regimes like the CCP as to why their authoritarian methods are necessary. It’s all for the public order and the public good as unfortunately, many people are stirred up even against their own interest by meddlers, demagogues, and foreign interests. Fortunately, the CCP knows better, as the Party makes sure that the experts are making decisions based on all the data. I would prefer to live in a democracy, and it astounds me to see people in the West repeating word for word what Russians and Chinese regime apologists say about their governments, all while explaining it’s all necessary to protect democracy.
    - rdm_blackhole 1y ago
      > Some people mainly come to political positions for emotional reasons rather than substantive ones As opposed to your positions. The masses, well, they think wrong, but you, you thought long and hard about everything and you came to the right conclusions. What's next? Give the right to vote only to the "right" people? After all, if you can't trust the judgment of the masses because their views are based mainly on emotional reasons then surely you don't think they should have a say in how their country should be run?
- rdm_blackhole 1y ago
  How convenient. This is the same argument as for encryption. You can't have encryption only for the good guys and not for the criminals. You either have encryption that protects everyone including criminals or you have no encryption. In this case, you can't have free speech while advocating for censorship against what you consider to be propaganda. Either everyone has the right to express themselves, including pro war lunatics or you right to free speech will eventually go extinct because then it's only a matter of time before someone else will use the same argument to start censoring a topic or an idea that you care about and they will do it the with the same zeal as you when you agreed to censor RT. Yet despite this fact that has been proven time and time again, here we are in 2025 with people like you who applaud censorship.
imcritic 1y ago
[flagged]