While I understand people’s initial reaction to think this is a positive thing, I don’t believe it is. The less free speech and media the Russian people have access to, the more control Putins propaganda machine has.
Practically all russians have had access to fully uncensored YT just one click away on their smartphones for over a decade (until today).
That didn’t really change anything. Russia’s problems lie in the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people, not in the lack of access to information.
They make a conscious and fully informed choice to be genocidal imperialists and embrace authoritarianism.
Russia’s problems lie in the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people, not in the lack of access to information.
They make a conscious and fully informed choice to be genocidal imperialists and embrace authoritarianism.
“they”?
what happens to dissidents in Putin’s Russia? It’s easy to criticize a repressed population when you’re not risking anything.
were all U.S. citizens responsible for the invasion of iraq? In U.S. where you don’t disappear for criticising the government and it’s choices, what difference did that freedom of speech make for Iraqis?
Where in the so called “west” do people keep buying from Putin’s Russia through cloaked trade?
while we’re on the subject of “genocidal imperialists embracing authoritarianism”, who are the greatest sponsors of one of the longest running apartheid regime? Is “the attitude of the overwhelming majority of its people” the cause of this genocidal apartheid?
nuances! “Overwhelming majority” is just trying to get by. Most people are not power hungry psychopaths. If Putin, Netanyahu and some more of their ilk died today, world would be a better place tomorrow.
fuck this! it’s time to go offline and read a decent book.
What about so called russian “dissidents”? Navalniy and his team openly supported the annexation of Crimea (and destruction of Ukrainian and Crimean Tartar culture).
The recently exchanged “dissidents” also showed their true colours by supporting the annexation of currently occupied territories in Ukraine.
We are not discussing US right now! The US did not annex Basra state, steal all the local children, force everyone to speak English and send anyone caught talking Arabic to a torture chamber; all with support of somewhere between 65% to 85% of their population.
The overwhelming majority of Russians are genocidal imperialists. They support invasions of foreign countries, annexations, attempts at elimatining local language and culture and setting up mass torture camps for anyone opposed to the yoke of russian degeneracy.
The “trying to get by” pitch is a ruse. Both qualitative and quantitative research (different methodologies, including ones that attempt to account for preference falsification) show this is not true and that on an outcome basis, the overwhelming majority of russians are indeed genocidal imperialists.
I don’t think a grassroots revolution will be taking place anytime soon, but this is aimed at the young people of Russia who are against the war. The old people there love Putin but I suspect they also aren’t watching YouTube.
The majority of the young people in Russia are genocidal imperialists. Support for extermination of other countries is of course higher in the older generations, but that doesn’t change the fact that a solid majority of young (e.g. 18 to 29) are genocidal imperialists.
I understand that it might be reassuring to repeat platitudes like “young people of russia are against the war”, but this is clearly not true.
Even the framing is suspect. What do you mean by “the war”; the full-scale invasion? In Ukraine, the war started in 2014 with annexation of Crimea and russian invasion of Donbas.
Not a Russian political expert, but the fact Putin keeps calling it “denazification” and a “special military operation” leads me to believe there’s a lot of people who don’t support a full blown war.
Why do you say this?
If 75% of russians support the “denazification” of Ukraine, that says a lot about them, no?
I have a slightly different take: I think it’s a positive thing because the sooner we destroy YouTube, the sooner YouTube will be destroyed.
My priorities are thus:
- Destroy YouTube
- Everything else
They know what they did.
damn. how would russians watch unwanted ads now?
AFAIK they didn’t have to watch ads since the sanctions took effect, because Google wasn’t allowed to monetize them.
Russian here. Yes, this is indeed true. They’ve been throttling the bandwidth for a good while before, even yt music was slow. GoodbyeDPI lets you bypass the blocks for now. Idk what to expect next tbh
Putin’s fight against reality continues. Who will be the victor?
Is this the Russian Government censoring them, or is YouTube just pulling out because the sanctions mean they can’t run ads to Russian IPs?
the biggest ISP in Russia, rostelecom, started throttling youtube by 80% last month and is planning a full blocking. It’s a curious choice though… even the hardest most Z people are not happy about it.
It is a double-edged sword, because it would leave them blind to certain news without propaganda. Which could have direct and indirect consequences.
The government claims it’s Google’s hardware getting outdated. Google says that’s bs.
I think that it’s convenient how they’re telling that to us right before throttling YouTube only with certain providers (and seems to be with only certain regions as well).
