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Russia Bans Roblox

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Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#91

Post by FeloniousHam »

notarget137 wrote: post #84
M95D wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A rich billionaire can still be affected by shareholders. A rich billioneaire is a shareholder. > If they stop providing shareholder value [...] they have to change. But we (the small people) don't care about the shareholder value. Shareholder value is often contrary to what we (the small people) value, so expect change for the worse. > due to mass boycotts or public scandals Sorry, what? > has spent a quarter cent…

It's baffling for me living in Russia that modern western societies see everything wrong with dictatorship from a goverment but nothing or almost nothing wrong with dictatorship from big capital. E.g. you can't change your break pads unless you go to authorized repair (literal control over your private property and how you use it) and big platforms banning you from multiple public forums because you said a big no-no…

"big capital" does not have the monopoly on violence (except in a dictatorship, through connections to the "big man").

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#92

Post by extesy »

mog_dev wrote: post #69
extesy wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That depends on what you mean by "operating". This very website, Hacker News, is not blocked in Russia - does that mean Y Combinator is "operating" there?

If they get money from users in that particular country then yes.

Not necessarily. Roblox does not directly receive money from users - nobody sends them a paper check or bank wire from Russia. Technically they get money from payment providers, who are supposedly compliant with all sanctions. I'm pretty sure that any provider that can support Roblox scale is big enough to worry about risks of being non-compliant.

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#93

Post by micik »

mingus88 wrote: post #87
notarget137 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's baffling for me living in Russia that modern western societies see everything wrong with dictatorship from a goverment but nothing or almost nothing wrong with dictatorship from big capital. E.g. you can't change your break pads unless you go to authorized repair (literal control over your private property and how you use it) and big platforms banning you from multiple public forums because you said a big no-no…

You don’t have to look very hard to see an enormous number of people expressing discontent at the latter. To speak to your examples, the right to repair, farmers vs John Deere, the exodus from X to Bluesky, the rise of alternative messaging platforms, the outright murder of CEOs on the street and the beatification of the primary suspect on social media…just to scratch the surface These are all headlines straight from…

oh boy. you served GP a portion so generous they'll have plenty left over to take home and chew on for a while.

that last sentence rung like a bell & will reverberate until Larry Ellison's police drones follow you home because you blocked the drive-in of a Larry-owned fastfood franchise by way of a peaceful sit-in, protesting the mistreatment of human workers by robot overseers at Larry's Lasagna, nation-wide.

orwell it not come to that?

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#94

Post by Atlas667 »

theshrike79 wrote: post #58
Atlas667 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're simplifying too much. So to you its the state VS who? The rich billionaires + us? The rich billionaires are the state. We're the ones with no real representation. The fundamental divide is workers vs capitalists, not simply people vs government.

A rich billionaire can still be affected by shareholders. If they stop providing shareholder value (due to mass boycotts or public scandals), they have to change. If it's a Putin-style dictator who has spent a quarter century digging his claws into every facet of the country, there's literally nothing you can do that doesn't involve physical violence to change things.

A rich billionaire has millions of times more political power than you.

You are living in a dictatorship right now. The dictatorship of capital. And just because our culture does not draw a line to differentiate capitalists and workers doesnt mean a difference doesnt exist.

Capitalists arent "just another citizen like you or me", but thats what they want us to think. It keeps the dream alive and the story going.

Oh "its us against the government". lol. Really?

Im telling you. The capitalists, the wealthy are the government.

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#95

Post by Atlas667 »

mk89 wrote: post #60
Atlas667 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if you have a say other than "that guy" or "that other guy". The wealthy already fund politicians' careers, they fund judges, they fund campaigns. The wealthy already run the country. They fund both parties as a tactic. The parties are just "good cop/bad cop".

This is democracy, it doesn't mean it's perfect. It's just a tool to keep a lot of people in line. It's the HOW that matters, which is what life finally is about. Being a crazy authoritarian guy with power of life and death over each of your citizens is one. No government at all is the other extreme, which finally leads always to another crazy guy. In between there is an ocean. ...and putting everything in the same p…

Is it a democracy when theres a whole class of people who can take over the political apparatus?

Is it democracy if a group of people totally coopt the electoral process by cultivating all the candidates and their policies behind the scenes and then present a few issues for us to bicker about?

Democracy is supposed to be everybody.

And you may say "but you can pick the person and representatives". But often these are already cultivated by the rich OR the political apparatus has been so corrupted that picking them does nothing.

Not only cause you can't influence policies after you vote, so that voting essentially becomes a pinky promise you make with the candidate. But also because the rest of the govt is so corrupted that an individual candidate, even if independent, is gonna have a hard time working in favor of the people.

You say in between theres an ocean, but for analogy purposes, what can the Millions of us do in an ocean if we don't have a boat?

Where's your think tank and lobbying group?

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#96

Post by BobaFloutist »

throwaway290 wrote: post #74
Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol, the dictator's approval rating is so high that he bans, forces to exile or kills any opposing candidate, never risking elections vs anyone not fully controlled by him. Every time someone like Bukele flexes that his approval rating is higher than Putin's, I laugh -- the guy clearly doesn't understand that this isn't the flex he thinks it is.

I used to be rosy eyed like you for a while I think if you talked to more fellow russians you would be surprised how many support him unironically) by my estimate more than 50% (of people who have an opinion) control of information is a magical thing

I mean the whole thing about perverting statistics is we can't know the truth, since anecdotal surveys are useless (which I realized as a child in 2004 when Bush won despite everyone I knew hating him) and anything big enough to be meaningful is corrupted.

Even if they didn't massage the stats after asking people, I doubt everyone is fully comfortable sharing their honest opinions.

So...we can't know. We likely never will know, at least how people at large felt in this precise moment.

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#97

Post by mopsi »

SanjayMehta wrote: post #89
mopsi wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is standard European censorship of Russian media and news. There is not a single media outlet left in Russia anymore. The media crackdown is complete. They are all government propaganda now, repeating the same narratives dictated by the Kremlin and free only to choose the wording. They deserve to be removed from the market the same way a box of cereal is pulled when ingredients do not match the printing on the…

Of course, US media is completely independent and has diverse views. We should all emulate US media. https://theweek.com/speedreads/764546/watch-surreal-video-co...

The other day I saw Judge Napolitano calling for Hegseth to be prosecuted as a war criminal for ordering a second strike on the survivors of a boat strike. This happened on Newsmax, which is ultra partisan and very pro-Trump. And even they are not always following the party line.

Nothing of this sort happens in Russia anymore. The Kremlin has full editorial control over all media outlets. What they want published gets published; what they want suppressed does not. That's it.

If you can find a single instance of the Russian minister of defence being accused of war crimes in the Russian media, then we can discuss further how the two countries compare. Until then, even the US corpo-infested media landscape remains leagues above Russia's.

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#98

Post by r00fus »

shevy-java wrote: post #31
RomanPushkin wrote: post #25

It's both good and bad. On one hand, it's sad that there's no access. On the other hand, it increases the diversity of tools and services worldwide. Google, for example, is well known for buying startups just to kill them. In Russia and China, they have their own search engines, social networks, eBay/Amazon alternatives, and so on. These companies have produced great free software like LLMs, databases, development to…

> Seeing a corporation lose control over the Internet But the state controls the flow of information in a dictatorship. So to me this seems more a lose-lose scenario than a lose-win or win-win.

What form of government do you think we live in? Where laws are routinely ignored by our "leadership" and bribery is essentially legal and we have our own "oligarchs"?

The US initiates wars and supports war crimes as policy - dictatorship? We're far beyond that.

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#99

Post by throwaway290 »

Andrew_nenakhov wrote: post #90
throwaway290 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is that, Moscow? I guess you aren't from Russia)

No, Chelyabinsk. You want a photo proof of me standing in the street?

Must be nice. Now imagine living not so close to "center" (the mostly white west of the country). They test more advanced blocking in the regions first because people don't complain so much. Same logic with contractors, most people are recruited to the war from these regions. Why? because they are poor and watch tv. What even is VPN? another ploy by anglo-saxons?;)

Basically I'll tell you it's like this:

60% chance you have some VPN apps, if you are not old or if you have a child to explain it to you. The main use: whatsapp or telegram which are semi blocked, and if you are young and fashionable or your fashionable son sends you these links then youtube-instagram-tiktok which are blocked. Regularly VPN fails (ISPs block them fast) so you turn on another one and keep doing like this until one works. Fun fact, paid ones are blocked faster so it is more reliable to use free VPN. (Remember that you won't hear about VPN by random people or teachers at school because it is very illegal)

And you should know that outside of tech bubble the most popular media in the country is by far VK, Telegram and maybe Whatsapp. Youtube/instagram/tiktok are minority. Telegram/whatsapp are legit why many people use VPN, but it is not required (probably the only reason they are not fully blocked is to discourage VPN use). And even then only until everybody switch to Max which is already required by many schools and in all budget jobs. Remember that most most people in Russia support the government and do what they are told.

So ask yourself how many people have a reason to bother with all this. And actually who of them is bigger idiot, who is using free VPN (safe like used condom) or who is not using VPN.

But OK, you can call everybody complete idiots, that's fine. Just don't expect people to take you very seriously while you are looking down on them.

Re: Russia Bans Roblox

#100

Post by throwaway290 »

BobaFloutist wrote: post #96
throwaway290 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to be rosy eyed like you for a while I think if you talked to more fellow russians you would be surprised how many support him unironically) by my estimate more than 50% (of people who have an opinion) control of information is a magical thing

I mean the whole thing about perverting statistics is we can't know the truth, since anecdotal surveys are useless (which I realized as a child in 2004 when Bush won despite everyone I knew hating him) and anything big enough to be meaningful is corrupted. Even if they didn't massage the stats after asking people, I doubt everyone is fully comfortable sharing their honest opinions. So...we can't know. We likely never…

I know from talking to people outside of my friend circle. Sure it's not reliable statistics but it's what I have. Try talking to taxi drivers and so on.
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