[mtsr]

[flagged]

[klabb3]

Not parent but I'm skeptical because normalizing blocking is a very real slippery slope. Last night I debugged an issue with one of my apps for 1h, it turned out one of the Cloudflare IPs my device got were legally blocked in Spain. Not even ISP DNS, but the IP. And this is because of some CF customer hosting a football (soccer) streaming site. This is the new normal, in a democratic country. What the post is talking about in Germany seems similar. And these are democratic countries with many constitutional freedoms. This is not a hypothetical, but happening today. ID verification is already implemented in the UK. Chat control is possibly next.

So let me flip the question: if a certain thing is illegal in a jurisdiction, but hosted outside, is it justified to block access to the hosting provider (notably, including Cloudflare and other giants)?

[heelix]

I would. Appetite for censorship should be measured against something I find unpalatable. When one starts down the road of making decisions for others - it is only a question of time before someone does the same for you with possibly a different perspective. The moment one finds themselves outside the groupthink on spaces vs tabs, I'd like that bar to be as far away as possible.

[bootsmann]

> The moment one finds themselves outside the groupthink

The RT ban is not about what RT publishes, you are free to publish their arguments more or less verbatim on your own site without getting sanctioned in Europe (which indeed some people do). The RT ban is about RT being a state owned propaganda network owned by the government thats waging an active war against Europe.

[kace91]

There is a difference I think between unpalatable content (that you disagree with, that you find incorrect, and so on) and content generated with the specific purpose of deceiving the reader.

I used to be a hardline freedom of information defender, but we must face the fact that humanity has become way too good at manufactoring opinions and even facts. We're exposed to this threat at all levels, from your local company invading your feed with hidden ads in legitimate tiktok content to nation states influencing your political worldview.

Considering yourself immune to this manipulation is as naive as thinking you don't need vaccines - depressingly, we've far beyond the point where individual protection is enough.

[simion314]

>I would. Appetite for censorship should be measured against something I find unpalatable.

In your country if say some public TV would publish hard core porn mid day for children to see, would there be consequences? like fines and license removal? I am sure in civilized countries that TV station will be punished.

Now imagine you have a Ruzzian TV station publishing hard core porn for children to see, how to you punsish them without paid trolls claiming censorship ? Because this si what happens, in Romania Romanian TV station need to respect the Romanian laws , liek for example pay fines and retract any falsehoods and mistakes, but Ruzzians can publish fake documents and videos and if we want them to respect the laws of our countries we it is censorship... blocking faked documents is bad, blocking boobs is good in the land of the free

[littlecranky67]

Clear case of "motive justifies the means". I think in a free democracy, no one should block any propaganda, as it the responsibility of the individual to asses what to read and what not. In a democracy, it is more dangerous to censor and justify the means with motive - this opens the door to unjust censorship.

[mnw21cam]

The best counter-argument I can provide to your wonderful ideal is that people are stupid, and they are vulnerable to being manipulated into believing dangerous peace-disrupting falsehoods by propaganda.

[morkalork]

What if at the end of the day, that propaganda does work and leaving it unopposed is as much a danger to democracy as censorship? It seems like a scenario where you have to pick your poison now, the last 100 years have shown populations can be manipulated.

[DoctorOW]

> Clear case of "motive justifies the means".

Except, in the case of RT, it was not justified in an abstract way at all. Consistently "reporting" on stories counter-indicated by all available evidence.

To put it another way, if a judge can imprison a murderer for life as justified by the motive of reducing murders, what's stopping them from imprisoning everyone with no justification at all? Well, in practice the evidence required is quite a hurdle to this.

If you're not arguing that RT is innocent of what it has been accused, then you're arguing against the concept of punitive action outright.

[vintermann]

It's true, Russia could be said to engage in full-blown hybrid warfare according to some definitions. I don't want to downplay what they do at all.

But if you applied it consistently, you'd have to admit that Germany, the US, and many other Western countries also engage in full-blown hybrid warfare, against their own populations.

[jijijijij]

> But if you applied it consistently, you'd have to admit that Germany, the US, and many other Western countries also engage in full-blown hybrid warfare, against their own populations.

Just because two things superficially share some traits doesn't mean they are equivalent, at all. "Full-blown warfare against their own populations" is a bit dramatic, don't you think? As a German, I can tell you, while the government doesn't much act to my benefit, I am not exactly at war with them either. Intelligence, military and police don't have the competence or power, either. Most importantly, like in many proper democracies, there is a plurality of opinions and oversight in parliament, which prevents this sort of thing at scale. "Full-blown warfare" would imply a grand conspiracy, that's simply not factual.

Apart from the UK, Hungary and Poland, I think that's true for most western countries. The US is a bit exceptional, of course, since... well, I don't know what the fuck they are smoking there.

[jddj]

I didn't get the impression they were making any value judgement

[mtsr]

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

[jamesnorden]

Surely it will stop at blocking them (the Bad Guys), it will never extend to blocking us (the Good Guys). What a naive way of thinking.

[GuB-42]

Which German laws did RT break?

Propaganda usually isn't banned, except in specific cases (defamation, hate speech, etc...). But AFAIK, RT is not special in that regard, it is just the kind of content one would expect from a website openly affiliated with Russian authorities.

[05]

Pretty sure the biggest propaganda channel is social media and it's wide open.

[mtsr]

I would be in favor of limiting these channels, because I agree with you it seems necessary. But it’s also something to be quite careful with, I feel.

I think the current shift in acceptance of blocking social media for children is a start and allows us to consider it’s positive and negative effects.

[imcritic]

You see, he isn't against propaganda, he is against propaganda he doesn't agree with.

[zosima]

No, it's not. Social media is massively censored in many EU countries (and UK).

[f1shy]

Not OP, but there is strong censorship. The previous government sent a police brigade to a random dud that said something like “he is a clown” or similar (don’t remember the details). In Germany you have to be extremely careful with what you say, and how you say it, because you can be in jail faster than you think.

There are people who see that as positive, because are used to be extremely careful and conscious of their words. But is a very thin line, where one word can obliterate your life as you know it.

[OKRainbowKid]

Please post a source

[poly2it]

In an ideal society there would be no need to block propaganda.

[rvnx]

Still concerning that there is a Ministry of Truth.

The good solution would be the educate the population about critical thinking, and to use their brain when they see information.

If you just censor things, you hide the real problems, and end up with dumb people without critical judgment (or no access to information).

[ur-whale]

> Are you seriously crying about the biggest Russian propaganda channel being blocked

The decision to classify something as propaganda should never be the role of a government, much less blocking it.

But that's something that's close to impossible for continental European cultures to ever understand, at a gut level.

[linohh]

Exactly. That isn't going to help the argument whatsoever. Blocking stuff without legal basis is an entirely different ballpark from legally mandated blocks after due process and the option for legal challenges.

[Spooky23]

It’s a cycle.

The Russian propaganda spends a lot of resources on reinforcing high-minded ideals that provide a scaffolding for the intellectual types to climb on. The suckers and idiots fall for the more odious stuff.

[zahlman]

I must ask sincerely: do you know of concrete instances where RT has been shown to claim things that are objectively untrue, that they reasonably ought to have known were untrue? Or is this just about them using the same techniques (selective reporting / emphasis on stories salient to particular worldviews, editorialization etc.) that everyone else uses?

For that matter, in most cases where RT has been linked to me, I couldn't see any clear way that the story advanced Russian interests, except perhaps by trying to paint the USA as full of internal social and cultural conflicts. But, frankly, American media does a pretty good job of that, too. (And many of those media outlets have also grossly misrepresented many events relevant to those conflicts — including ones where I know very well that they were misrepresented because I witnessed them first-hand. For example, I watched the Rittenhouse trial live-streamed, and then read media coverage describing something barely recognizable as what I just saw.)

(Besides, it's not like they're trying to hide that "rt" stands for Russia Today.)

[petre]

Who cares. Just make it go away, there's too much noise already. I for one don't care about the arguments of some "news outlet" paid for by the ones who attacked Ukraine. The Global Times isn't banned because the CCP is outlining issues using restraint.

[user3939382]

Is Chris Hedges a Russian propagandist?

[tomp]

That is a retarded justification.

It’s incredibly valuable to understand how the enemy thinks.

[djfobbz]

Interesting...so facts are just whatever comes pre-approved by your worldview? Handy system!

[Argonaut998]

Yes?

[sorushn]

Can't take the "propaganda" and "misinformation" excuses seriously when the German establishment media has been blatantly lying to their teeth about an ongoing genocide, and smearing anyone who stood for an obvious moral cause with 0 repercussion. They make the Israeli far-right newspapers blush.