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Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

reuters.com

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Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People in our government believe that the Internet was designed in the US to control the world. Maybe it wasn't designed with this objective in mind, but it is definitely used this way. And the fact that Google and Facebook are de-facto monopolies doesn't help. And I'm not from the government. I'm just another little guy that sees tons of that propaganda every day. For example, I watch mostly videos from conference…

Another example: on one of facebook groups I regularly see posts from a person regularly bashing Russia. Under every post he leaves derogatory comments. Sometimes he posts derogatory posts although the facebook group is not about Russia at all. Just recently he had shared a meme picture from some of the "opposition" groups (Alexei Navalny or his friends) stating that Russia has the highest suicides rate in the world…

For what it is worth, Wikipedia places Russia as number 3 in suicide rate (when standardized for age) behind Guyana and Lesotho. This is based on WHO numbers. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_r...)

> This is all you need to know about our "opposition".

Ok

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! That's a tough stance for a government to take. I guess using proxies, VPNs (w IPSec), and overlay networks like Tor and i2p would be made illegal too? DNS based blocking is easy to get around: It is known to not work effectively. Content based blocking can be done away with TLS. And... IP based blocking wouldn't scale [0], one would think, and def isn't reliable because of ElasticIPs offered by Cloud Provide…

I bet the next thing Russian (and many other oppressive ones) will try is forcing government-issued root certs on client devices with mandatory mitm. Sure, some devices might not be capable of importing new root certs, but for sufficiently dictatorial regime it's not a problem.

Strict CertifcatePinning can thankfully prevent this from working [0] as intended, although on the flip-side it also introduces a significant problem for deep-packet inspection for malware/intrusion detection and privacy enthusiasts who would like to re-map certain kinds of traffic on the client-side [1].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10727649

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19172038

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#113
post #89

And things like this make the educated and ambitious young move abroad. Good for the economies of Western Europe but not so good for Russia.

And bigger salary and bigger projects have nothing to do with it.

As a software developer you can get salary in range of $3000 - $5000 per month on the top level. You can make even more if you are good and work remotely/contracting. With this salary moving to Europe won't give you a rise, you are likely to make less in most EU countries. Moving to US will give you a rise in salary but not radical. People I know moving to EU/US not because of money, they move because of health care, education, crime, corruption and perceived lack of a better future.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#114
post #68

Russian here. Few points: - Root DNS and most of the cloud providers are in US jurisdiction. US declared Russia as top 3 enemy and applies random 'sanctions'; - Russian (and EU) laws require companies to store citizen's personal information locally; - many lazy developers and service providers relied on AWS/GCP thus breaking the law. Telegram blocking attempt has shown that even some government resources are hosted o…

I agree, Russian Government is doing this because US and its allies are threatening all legitimate governments around the world. They want to impose their puppets. Look at what's happening in Venezuela. People in Venezuela is suffering beacuse of US sanctions and war threats, but the news are always that "the Dictatorship don't let people eat".

I love comment rating systems because they limit effect of paid comments like this one.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#115
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Russia this might happen if you injure somebody or damage property during unpermitted rally.

That's of course a lie. Both from practical standpoint (police will invent stuff out of whole cloth if needed with courts rubber-stamping it) and from legal one, too. КоАП РФ [1] article 20.2 6.1, "unsanctioned gatherings leading to interruption of… pedestrian flow… up to 15 days of detention" (do I need to explain that any gathering is in practice an "interruption"?). Moreover, УК РФ 212.1 [2] says that breaking the…

"That's of course a lie."

That was rude and unnecessary.

According to [1], you are right and this article is used as you described against targeted political activists.

At the same time, it is not how it is used in general case [2].

Moreover, if you look, for example, at the preceding article (20.1 - disorderly conduct in public places) [3] you must conclude that in Russia people are jailed for 15 days for saying 'fuck you' to somebody in a public place. Which, of course, is not happening because the degree of punishment, while at the judge's discretion, has to be proportional.

[1] https://ovdinfo.org/codex/ch-61-st-202-koap

[2] https://dogovor-urist.ru/%D1%81%D1%83%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%B1%D0%B...

[3] https://www.consultant.ru/document/cons_doc_LAW_34661/747542...

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#116
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for a detailed explanation. That seems pretty radical. I mean, because of technology progress (mainly crypto improvements, but also cheaper hardware development) I only see two outcomes in the future: (it's a global issue, not just related to Russia) 1. We have a complete freedom of information exchange. It's a powerful thing. It's not only free speech, but also easily available all illegal digital content and…

Nope, it's not radical. DNS system is controlled by US company and if you rely on it your country's infrastructure is vulnerable. So if US decides to cut Russia from DNS national services including government sites should continue to function. People panic without understanding the reasons behind this law.

Could you end up with competing DNS services in different nations that direct users to different IPs? Now that could be a mess.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#117
post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example: on one of facebook groups I regularly see posts from a person regularly bashing Russia. Under every post he leaves derogatory comments. Sometimes he posts derogatory posts although the facebook group is not about Russia at all. Just recently he had shared a meme picture from some of the "opposition" groups (Alexei Navalny or his friends) stating that Russia has the highest suicides rate in the world…

> they're on a payroll from some non-Russian agency or NGO. At this point, I would be incredibly surprised if any country in the world wasn't engaged in some sort of online trolling/fake news dissemination on either the global (e.g. Russia vs US vs China) or local (internal politics) scale. It's the best way to spread propaganda while making it seem as real as possible.

And once you propagandize the population successfully enough, they'll carry on without you

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#118
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And bigger salary and bigger projects have nothing to do with it.

As a software developer you can get salary in range of $3000 - $5000 per month on the top level. You can make even more if you are good and work remotely/contracting. With this salary moving to Europe won't give you a rise, you are likely to make less in most EU countries. Moving to US will give you a rise in salary but not radical. People I know moving to EU/US not because of money, they move because of health care,…

>Moving to US will give you a rise in salary but not radical.

My colleagues working in SV and particularly at Google would disagree.

>they move because of health care, education, crime, corruption and perceived lack of a better future

Okey, replace salary with quality of life. I doubt that intangible political motives alone would've been enough.

Re: Thousands of Russians protest against internet restrictions

#120
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, Russian Government is doing this because US and its allies are threatening all legitimate governments around the world. They want to impose their puppets. Look at what's happening in Venezuela. People in Venezuela is suffering beacuse of US sanctions and war threats, but the news are always that "the Dictatorship don't let people eat".

I love comment rating systems because they limit effect of paid comments like this one.

Comment rating systems are purposefully gamed by "paid" actors -- fake accounts, likes, etc. They aren't foolproof for preventing misinformation as such.

Also, it's rather also disingenuous to write off an entire comment as a "paid actor". That poster just makes the claim (which I believe you contest), that Venezuela is a "legitimate government"? Just say you disagree with the claim and explain why. It's something that would promote meaningful discussion.

Cause really, although I'm a bit of a novice in Central/South American history -- the USA has indeed done some shady stuff in the recent past.

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