Version longue en français: https://www.bortzmeyer.org/coupure-russie.html
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.
Just out of sheer anti-censorship curiosity: are RT streams still available somewhere on the Internet?
Maybe just changing the DNS Servers would be sufficient in this case. Alternatively you might be able to play the stream by the direct playlist link: https://rt-glb.rttv.com/live/rtnews/playlist_4500Kb.m3u8 (in a media player like VLC or mpv). If all fails a VPN or Tor might still work.
Watching this stream shows great examples of straw men and whataboutisms
Yes. & i had to look it up (eli5) :
whataboutisms : A propaganda technique where criticisms are deflected by raising corresponding criticisms of the opposite side.
Please, add a note on “straw men”
“A straw man is a form of argument and an informal fallacy of having the impression of refuting an argument, whereas the real subject of the argument was not addressed or refuted, but instead replaced with a false one.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man)
Basically I claim that X is true, and someone debunks my claim by saying Y is false, while Y is actually something I never said
It doesn’t do any good if all privacy groups that govern Tor end nodes are in US and Europe, because that’s exactly the places where things will get banned.
Imagine advocating against authoritarian censorship and having it on your own home.