Several ISPs in France have started censoring rt.com via their DNS resolver.
Why are they doing this? I guess officially they’ll say it’s because of Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and that’s partially correct.
But also worth pointing out is that despite very uncritical propaganda from the regime about what happens in Russia, RT is one of the only mass media (non-independent publication) where you can have decent news about social uproar in France (gilets jaunes, anti-police-abuse riots, etc).
We haven’t reached the point where posts to RT are censored on social media (where it’s most popular) so i can’t exactly say we have “one side” to the news yet but it’s getting closer.
This message is both a fuck you to french ISPs engaging in censorship (remember Sci-Hub? TPB?) and a reminder to all the Putin fanboys around here what “there’s only one side to the news” really means: Russia is already there (there’s a few independent publications but they’ve been struggling for years with State censorship and journalist assassinations) and France is getting closer (on the other side of the narrative). The rest of you who live in countries with more free speech can’t even realize what information control means so please don’t take these words lightly.
RT was actually useful back in 2006. It provided alternate viewpoints in American politics. But it’s morphed into a blatant mouth piece for Russian propaganda since then. It’s not even subtle. Nor, at that rate, useful.
It is hard to find independent news these days. But I am enjoying the sudden drop in anti-vax noise as soon as the cyber war was kicked off by the Russian invasion. So, until Russia goes back to their strategy of highlighting western hypocrisy, rather than actively subverting our institutions with fake news, I’m fine with turning off the spigot of disinformation and lies.
RT was actually useful back in 2006. It provided alternate viewpoints in American politics. But it’s morphed into a blatant mouth piece for Russian propaganda since then. It’s not even subtle. Nor, at that rate, useful.
It is hard to find independent news these days. But I am enjoying the sudden drop in anti-vax noise as soon as the cyber war was kicked off by the Russian invasion. So, until Russia goes back to their strategy of highlighting western hypocrisy, rather than actively subverting our institutions with fake news, I’m fine with turning off the spigot of disinformation and lies.
If countries can get away with blocking RT, they will follow by blocking more and more inconvenient websites.
They can get away with it. That’s why it’s important to have distributed servers like Lemmy.
Yes definitely. But not enough people use Lemmy yet.