RT isn’t banned because we don’t like what it says - it’s banned because it’s a part of information war. It’s not media - you won’t find there a single fact you wouldn’t get from western media.
Which, btw, is very obvious when you actually look at RT. It’s a (more American than Russian for some reason) right wing sewage pool in the comments and some Daily Mail level “journalism” above.
It is an information arm of the Russian government. Restricting direct actions of other government on your territory is a well established international practice.
Europe doesn't ban [dis]information from Russia (until of course it violates specific laws of a given country against say inciting violence, propaganda of genocide, etc.)
RT is a propaganda department of Russian government. Most countries do regulate behavior of the agents of foreign governments on their territory.
It is up to a specific government whether they allow another government to come in and for example spread propaganda or mine coal or build railways. Usually there is some reciprocity expected. Russia blocked not only West government propaganda agencies, it is also blocked independent media. So, the West governments are more than expected to block Russian government propaganda operations, especially given that non government information flow from Russia isn't blocked (that would be the censorship similar to that Russia has been doing, and West hasn't done it yet).
> RT is a propaganda department of Russian government
So is BBC. And they lied about iraq having weapons of mass destruction. We didn't ban them.
Yes, russia is led by an ex-kgb dictator... do we really want to be the same as him, and do the same things? Are we really no better at censorship and propaganda than him?
>So is BBC. And they lied about iraq having weapons of mass destruction. We didn't ban them.
do you really think that that BBC lying was a deliberate action of Great Britain government against your country? I think nobody thought that, so it wasn't banned.
In general you're mixing 2 different things - an operation of a foreign government on your territory and information content. Blocking the first is sovereign right while blocking the second is censorship and is a mark of dictatorship.
The RT operation in EU is blocked, while the content isn't - you wouldn't get punished for forwarding or retelling (on your own volition without any payment from Russian government for doing so) a content of RT propaganda contradicting official information of EU. In Russia BBC is blocked as an operation as well as its content - i.e. you'd get criminally punished for forwarding or retelling (again, even at your own will) a BBC content contradicting official [dis]information of the Russian government, i.e Russia does have censorship.
The BBC lying might as well be. Good luck keeping a job at the BBC if you are the kind of person that wouldn't have taken the US on their word in that situation.
Instead of keeping an editorial line on a list of subjects, organizations like the BBC simply maintain a culture, from the top down, where if you were to threaten propaganda by the government or it's allies that is too valuable, you will lose your job.
Are you sure BBC or CNN weren’t banned in Iraq? Because there is a quite a difference between the offensive side (US and UK in Iraq, Russia in Ukraine) and the defending side.
Also, RT block is very different from censorship in China: it’s aimed at the outlet itself, not at its users.
> So is BBC. And they lied about iraq having weapons of mass destruction. We didn't ban them.
And that is relevant how? Here comes the whataboutism.
> Yes, russia is led by an ex-kgb dictator... do we really want to be the same as him, and do the same things? Are we really no better at censorship and propaganda than him?
Russia uses misinformation as an attack, EU blocks it.
Sure. BBC World Service wiki page describes some of the history/scandals [1]. For example, there has always been a MI5 office inside BBC headquarters. More in depth investigative journalism has been done by Aaron Maté, Max Blumenthal, et al. [2], specifically this article is very damning and caused Twitter to implement a warning label about "potentially hacked materials" (implying they are true) [3]
Do you have any that isn't presented by people who actively spread Russian propaganda?.
Perhaps an article from a website that isn't actively known for misleading reporting and being sympathetic to authoritarian regimes.
The wikipage on the grey zone is pretty damning. I mean using these people as a source for anything on the west that is critical would be a huge mistake.
> The website published pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the debunked claim that Ukrainian fighters were using civilians as human shields, and that the Mariupol theatre attack was staged by the Azov Regiment.[24] The Russian fake news website Peace Data republished articles by The Grayzone in order to build a reputation as a progressive and anti-West media source and to attract contributors.[38]
Sorry, can you address any of the claims made by the journalists? or only engage in smears?
Why do you think Twitter added a "hacked materials" warning to that article instead of simply removing it as "Russian misinformation", as they have repeatedly, and perhaps justifiably done for other tweets?
Wikipedia is totally unreliable for controversial topics that challenge the media establishment. Just look at their list of "reliable sources". It's a bad joke!
It doesn’t matter if Russia didn’t directly invade NATO yet - it invaded a western country and it poses a threat to others, and that alone is enough for NATO to pacify it to ensure safety of its citizens.
It’s not “anything”: it’s not like Fox News is banned, or antivaxers. We are talking about an actual shooting war between a genocidal regime and the western civilization, and the ongoing process of Russia turning from “Nigeria with nukes”[1] into North Korea. It’s a once-per-century event.
In my free country media has to obey rules. There are rules for porn, ads, defamation, bad language. Not sure where youa re from that media can has no rules and they can publish anything without any consequences.
But that media is not in your free country, it's hosted outside. You're banning people connecting to servers in other countries, hosted under their laws.
That is irrelevant, Google, PornHub respect the local laws if they want to do business here. I don't think my country constitution protects the free speech of Russian media, they can spawn a local media and then follow the local laws if they want constitutional protection, but just to emphasize in my country TV channels were closed because they ignored the laws too many times and fail to pay their fines.
Also no need to pretend you don't know what Russian version of the "facts" are, you can find what their claim in media and social networks. But in Russia world each fact might be in a superposition of 3 realities, the initial Russian fake reports, then when caught the second altered fake report , and the third convoluted fake version where the army of trolls found all their previous holes and patch them with more idiotic falsehoods. 2
> That is irrelevant, Google, PornHub respect the local laws if they want to do business here
But they don't do business "here", they do their business "there". We're "here" and connecting to their service "there". EU doesn't want us to connect to their business "there".
> Also no need to pretend you don't know what Russian version of the "facts" are, you can find what their claim in media and social networks. But in Russia world each fact might be in a superposition of 3 realities, the initial Russian fake reports, then when caught the second altered fake report , and the third convoluted fake version where the army of trolls found all their previous holes and patch them with more idiotic falsehoods.
I was born in yugoslavia, I know how the government-lead media is. And that's another reason to not-censor foreign media, even foreign government owned, because the real truth is always somewhere between what russians say and what the western media says. I really don't want to read articles like this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/gallery/2022/may/17/evacua...
Maybe read higher quality media, if you don't like the West go ahead and read media from here in Easter Europe. I am also checking BBC News and I am plesently surprised that they always mention things like "Ukrainians say" , "Russian diplomat says" , "we can't confirm" . This means that you will get the news with a delay on this website because they have actual employee that will connect with real people in all camps and ask fora response, they also have articles debunking fake news from Russia etc.
I am in EU and I have access to TASS https://tass.com so at least in my country I can get free access directly to Russian main media, I can also see the Russian trolls version of facts on social media and Russia has a group of fans that promote their alternate reality so we are not in "danger" of not knowing what Putin wants us to know.
TL:DR
- we don't have absolute free speech in EU, most constitutions have limits and consequences for bad behavior (we are not USA)
- there is high quality western media(stop reading tabloids)
- if you hate the waste read Easter European media, Ukrainian neighbors have journalists on the ground and they are also more familiar with the history of the region and remember media past Russian/Putin actions
- only a few propaganda media channels might be blocked, there are plenty Russian media channels available, so only "concerned trolls" will raise the issue that we the poor EU guys can't read Putin approved facts.
If I make a law in my country that allows me to throw rocks at people in another bordering country without repercussions, then that other country should just let me do it because those are my country's laws?
If Netherlands allow smoking marijuana, and your country doesn't, should you remove all the signposts pointing towards the Netherlands (DNS block) and block the border crossings (IP block), because you're afraid some of your people will go there to get high?
You're conflating intent of one law with execution of another.
No one would do that, because it's stupid and ineffective.
Instead you potentially punish the citizen for having committed a crime on foreign soil, and/or arrest the dealer should they come to your country. This is something nearly every nation state already does. Another thing to look at is extradition treaties.
In the case of disinformation, punishing someone for reading it doesn't stop the spread, but the manufacture of it is undesirable. Current execution is the best method to reach the intent, because doing things like blowing up webservers is undesirable.
how do you know if something is disinformation if your government blocks your direct access to the content and suggests that you read local moderated outlets instead? You just blindly delegated your conclusion forming capacity to a third party that decides for yourself.
Because all this content is still easily available, it’s just that you need to consciously want to access it instead of being served it by “I’m being lucky”.
> Instead you potentially punish the citizen for having committed a crime on foreign soil, and/or arrest the dealer should they come to your country. This is something nearly every nation state already does. Another thing to look at is extradition treaties.
But they didn't commit a crime on foreign soil... they did something legal there.
The servers, manufacture and the information is created and stored in russia, and we're just "travelling" (with our IP packets) to russia to read that content there (I'm assuming the servers are located there).
I still remember when freedom of speech was a right people fought for, even if they didn't like what "the other person" said.... sadly, this is changing and bringing with it dark times.
> But they didn't commit a crime on foreign soil... they did something legal there.
Irrelevant to how a state chooses to organize its criminal code. If the act is considered severely criminal in nature then most nation states do not care where it occurred, nor should they.
> I still remember when freedom of speech was a right people fought for, even if they didn't like what "the other person" said.... sadly, this is changing and bringing with it dark times.
Lies by foreign actors are not the same as opinions or criticism of a country's own citizens.
They are an offense against the public and should be policed. This isn't about simply "not liking what someone said". This is about statements that have negative value; created for the express purpose of causing confusion and harm.
Of course we are at war - Russian nazis invaded, and so we are defending. But you can’t send nukes, because
1. Nukes are bit more complicated than vodka or coal, and given that nowadays Russia can’t even make a car, nukes need regular servicing, and the rest of its armed forces are a joke, it’s highly unlikely their nukes are any better.
2. Sending nukes would turn Russia into wasteland; rest of the world would do better because of its natural advantage.
I’m sorry but people in general aren’t critical thinkers — broadcasting false and misleading communication should be avoided since it’s extremely dangerous. See the storming of the Capitol Building. It’s especially dangerous when that communication is meant to undermine your country and what your country stands for.
so then why do we have this conversation at all? Russia has done nothing wrong, it's just protecting its own dumb proles from false and misleading information meant to undermine their country and what it stands for.
It's relevant, because we didn't ban western media (well, our own) back then, for spreading false propaganda (ending in many many deaths), and we're banning RT now, because it's "them" and not "us".
If we hate false news/propaganda/... then ban cnn (and many other media), but we clearly want (and allow) "that kind" of propaganda, just not the russian one.
Look at the headline image, the title ("evacuated"), and the "feels" that they're trying to produce. And the reality? They surrendered and were taken as prisoners of war to siberia.
If someone has surrendered, i want our media to report "surrendered" and if they were taken as prisoners, I want to see "prisoners" mentioned somewhere... I have no idea what they were trying to achieve with an article like this, but it sure as hell wasn't truthful reporting.
the information i got from rt was that putin says he’s invading bc the us is putting missiles in ukraine, which take a certain amount of minutes to hit moscow, which putin claimed was unacceptable to russian national security. from the west the only info you get is that he’s crazy and there was no reason at all for the invasion. so without even getting into details of is it actually true or not, it was nice to at least hear putin’s rationale, because the west’s explanation that he’s doing this for no reason except that he’s crazy is really insulting to the intelligence of everyone who is not a complete moron. but unfortunately that is 99% of people.
“the us is putting missiles in ukraine” — first time I’m hearing that explanation. Didn’t he invade because Ukraine is “full of nazis”? Or was it due to the “nukes Ukraine was planning to get”? Or to “return Ukraine to Russia”?
First it was freeing people of Donbass. Then it was NATO rockets. Then they started war and Nazi hoax come to be. Then they made a story that if they didn’t strike first, Kyiv would attack them soon. Then bald man compared himself to Peter The Great and thinks that he’s returning grounds to historic Russian empire.
See, that's the problem when "news" like RT hits on people that have no critical thinking ability. No one needs to put missiles physically closer for half a century now; they just launch from nuclear subs. Even Israel can do this.
(And this isn't even the stated reason! You can just watch Putins faux-historical speech!)
I don't think we can put aside the details of whether it is true or not (it's not), because Putin has full info about the fact that it's nonsense, so it's extremely relevant to his mindset (ie, it's a fabrication aimed at a completely unrelated objective).
So, for example, if russia became more friendly and cooparetive with eg. Cuba, that wouldn't be problematic to USA, because proximity doesn't matter that much?
You're shifting goalposts because you don't have any rebuttal to my point.
In the many years that Cuba was friendly and cooperative with the USSR, the US never made any more than a joke attempt at a military intervention. The US was obviously not thrilled, but never did anything comparable to the current invasion of Ukraine. Not sure your point.
Sanctions cost lives too. And sure, there is no equivalence between them and the literal ethnic genocide Russia has been perpetrating for the past five months, but you can’t really claim US isn’t actively hostile towards Cuba: it literally destroyed the country and is forcibly keeping it like that purely to keep votes of Cuban diaspora.
But that’s besides the point, which is: like it or not, in politics might makes right, and Russia very obviously lacks the might.
I mean.. let's be honest.. if it's a cold winter this year, Russia will be punishing all of us. I live in slovenia, we're tiny, we have only a handful of soldiers, and we're still a part of occupying forces in countries like syria... so maybe we deserve it... but i prefer watching "punishments" on tv, and not by being cold and hungry in my own home, because a few politicians are in a dick-size competition, while they're stealing a bunch of our money and helping their pals in the weapons industry.
Most of the gas is used for industry, not heating. And even the industry seems to be able to lower the usage quite drastically. It’ll be tough for economy of course.
Also, everyone has just realized Russian army was all bluff. Every single country bordering with them will take advantage of this. Which means there will be multiple parties we can buy the formerly Russian gas from.
Yep... and if true or not (and let's be fair, if Ukraine joined NATO, there would actually be missles located there), the west used even worse propaganda, even twice in a row ([0] and [1]).
Which, btw, is very obvious when you actually look at RT. It’s a (more American than Russian for some reason) right wing sewage pool in the comments and some Daily Mail level “journalism” above.