Ukraine banned vkontakte since 2017. Just to add some perspective.
"This is different" I guess.
Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
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Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#52anyone knows how Russia limited the access?
(lived in Russia until 2021, not authorative source of info) All ISP providers are required to have black boxes installed on-site. These boxes can do traffic shaping (e.g. Twitter is degraded) and basic filtering based on IP addresses. I think, deep packet inspection is also feasible. Config updates are pushed centrally to these boxes. Self-managed VPNs still work.
These ISP blackboxes central command should be a prime target now.
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't follow that line of reasoning. If a few Russian kids express "no hatred against Ukraine" and claim to actually feel powerless at the oligarchic structure of their country (Russia), in which way do you feel this could be manufactured psyops? What purpose could this serve as propaganda, "Russians kids don't like Putin or the ruling system"? Wouldn't propaganda look more like "our country means Ukraine no harm,…
It's being used right now to soften the perception of Russia ("See look, the Russian people don't approve of this!" as a way of implicitly arguing against sanctions) right now, that seems valuable. Also "chaos" has value. It's a big thing in how PsyOps works (from my limited understanding); when you sew chaos, you can get away with more.
Most of the propaganda is much more obvious than that, for the most part it ends up downvoted on Reddit. In this context, the messages are more like "give up and flee, it's inevitable" (alternately: staged video of a pile of bodies, seen yesterday; large formations deploying from Chechnya, etc), "the war is because of NATO expansion", "Nazi government". Just to name a few themes.
I would also guess that 90% of propaganda you see is primarily people spreading it for ideological and non-monetary reasons, it just has to be seeded enough for the messages to be spread.
One of the fascinating trends is that the most rapidly spreading stuff is purely visual, short video. The dominance of short clips is incredible, and allows for so much subtly misleading content.
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#54Is this the first big nation military conflict in the era of ubiquitous video streaming ? It feels like this is de-staging the aggression, you see more details, you see more failures, it feels less impressive than past fights on TV for instance.
All the US conflicts in the past 10 years were in the era of ubiquitous video streaming.
US showed it can kill journalists (!) who are not aligned enough (remember wikileaks video).
It might skew how wars are portrayed.
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#55No fan of Russia, but to pretend that facebook is some neutral platform that isn't trying to push their own political agenda is naive.
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted, there is credible evidences that support this view, if not obvious from the US elctions
Could you please share them?
All I recall was accusations by political parties from both sides.
Just because some content got popular amongst some cohort, it doesn't mean it was being pushed as an agenda. That is a problem any platform that depends on user activity to surface content will have, that you might see whatever the other side wants to share too.
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#56Ukraine banned vkontakte since 2017. Just to add some perspective. "This is different" I guess.
With Russia actively invading Ukraine at the moment, yeah it's different.
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#57Telegram is main social media platform of this war. Kinda weird to connect to Russian SM to find out what other side is saying (with Google translate).
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#58Ukraine banned vkontakte since 2017. Just to add some perspective. "This is different" I guess.
> "This is different" I guess.
I should say so. Despite all of its hard-earned criticism, Facebook isn't the social media arm of a foreign invader.
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's being used right now to soften the perception of Russia ("See look, the Russian people don't approve of this!" as a way of implicitly arguing against sanctions) right now, that seems valuable. Also "chaos" has value. It's a big thing in how PsyOps works (from my limited understanding); when you sew chaos, you can get away with more.
> "see look, the Russian people don't approve of this! Don't punish them with sanctions!" But there have already been demonstrations against this war in Russia, with detainees and video footage showing this. And if you don't trust the footage, I'm sure someone knows someone in Russia who can attest to this. So we know at least some people in Russia don't support the invasion. More importantly, in my opinion: that kin…
You can tell lies by saying nothing but the truth :) One example that comes to mind is the time of Solidarity revolution in Poland.
It was a time where most Poles only had two TV channels (own by communists) and handful of radio stations (also controlled by communists) to choose from. Now, before the strike in Gdansk docks happened TV or radio did not cover crime rates at all. After the strike started, media started filling the news with reports of every murder, rape, burglary they could find. This created the impression that Solidarity pushed the country into total chaos, paving the way to introducing martial law, while the truth is (you can check that in police statistics from that time) the crime rates actually went DOWN significantly during that period.
Now, did those TV channels lie or not? Every single crime they reported in the news was 100% truth, but the aggregate impression they created was 100% false.
Re: Russia to restrict Facebook access for 'censoring' its media
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
If someone invented an algorithm to enable network effects on decentralized networks, they'd secure a place in computing history.
Open protocols (HTTP and email) have even greater network effects than closed solutions (Facebook). However, you still need a strong push in the beginning, which protocols don’t usually have the funding while VC burns $100 million in an initial push.
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