Great summary. One missing thing is that goverments are getting better at using free Internet for propaganda. In Poland we have open Internet so far, but we are increasingly exposed to Russian goverment news/comments that are factually wrong but repeated consistently.
Basically - we see the same thing we already saw with free market. It is not free by itself. Countries and companies can use it to establish monopolies.
Freedom is not for free. It is something we need to define, establish and then continuously fight for it.
Being a Russian, I am naturally very curious about this idea of the Russian propaganda getting a stronger and stronger influence over the minds of people in other countries. Could you kindly elaborate on the following issues that mystify me:
- Where do people get the Russian news and why do they care about what Russia has to say? I mean, I don't follow Polish news (or French news, or German news, etc.); so why would people get their information from the Russian outlets?
- You said that the Russian news/comments are factually wrong. What do you use as a reference (which sources would give you factually correct information and how do you verify that it is factually correct)?
Those are honest questions; I am not defending the Russian outlets in any way - I am just curious about how people perceive different news media
Yes, I can understand your wondering (I'm a Russian too). When I hear about the waves of Russian propaganda all around the globe I can't stop to ask myself a question: "how we become so powerful?". I'm afraid that nowadays some people tend to call any opposite opinion in their countries as a Russian propaganda. And I can understand that with a lack of good opposition/alternative media people start to read Russia Today, just like we here in Russia read BBC and other Western media, especially when we think that our state media tries to hide something from us.
By the way, do you know what a main evil scheme Kremlin uses to brainwash the citizens, to set them against the West? It's not some made-up, fake news. They made a few websites instead, where anyone can read translated articles about Russia, published in Western media. And that's it. As you understand, it's much harder to find something pro-Russian there to translate, than vice versa.
On a serious note, I think that the only way to fight with the streams of fakes (regardless the country) is a restriction of anonymity on the Internet.
> On a serious note, I think that the only way to fight with the streams of fakes (regardless the country) is a restriction of anonymity on the Internet.
Please stop suggesting that.
There's zero evidence that removing anonymity works and in that process we lose our online privacy. And I think anonymity is precisely what we need to preserve freedom.
Also people are simply jackasses, real names or not. If you don't believe me, engage in conversations on Facebook about politics sometimes. There's nothing that shakes my faith in humanity faster.
Don't give me wrong, I'm not protecting this idea. But I don't like some alternatives either, like banning the access to "enemy media". And it's more shameful when some democratic country doing it.
I think, the main problem is that Internet was not designed for the masses originally. In 90s you could find there mostly scientists, programmers, hackers, writers etc. Here, in Russia, everything was concenrated in Fidonet and we had our own Eternal September [1] (2000-...) when dial-up access become cheaper. So, what to do now? To be honest, I don't know. I'm not promoting segregation either. I think it's pointless to make a modern version of Usenet/Fidonet/... for closed groups of like-minded people.
> When I hear about the waves of Russian propaganda all around the globe I can't stop to ask myself a question: "how we become so powerful?"
Thank you! These are my thoughts exactly. I mean, I remember the Soviet times, when the Russian intellectuals, having zero confidence in the official news, used to listen to foreign radio stations over AM radio – Voice of America and BBC World Service (and perhaps Deutsche Welle too) being the most prominent among them. What happened that now the Western media loudly complains about RT? One might even think that the situation has now been reversed, and that the Western world somehow trusts RT more than they trust their mainstream media. But this does not make any sense!
RT played the long game, and has done a surprisingly good job of gaining a following in fringe viewers throughout the US. Anecdotally, I participated pretty heavily in the first couple weeks of the Occupy Wall Street protests in Manhattan. For the first week or so, we got very little news coverage, and a lot of the established media was downplaying the movement, waiting for it to blow over, or picking the craziest people they could find out of the crowd to discredit us. Russia Today was one of the few news organizations who came out early, giving us positive coverage, and reflecting the views of the protesters more or less accurately. A lot of my friends became RT viewers because RT legitimately succeeded where the domestic media failed.
RT has played the strategy of going in and eating the domestic media's lunch when they hesitate to cover legitimate stories, and that has given them a dedicated following. Unfortunately, as time has passed, it has grown more clear (at least to me) that this bona-fide coverage is the bait they pull people in with, and that their coverage in general is of the journalistic quality of Fox News. They use the same tactics of lying through omission, stoking panic, appealing to emotion, and selecting stories to promote an agenda.
As for the social media shilling, the situation is extremely nuanced. At this point there are probably tens of thousands of organizations astroturfing social media to promote their interests. Russia gets a lot of attention, because they seem to be doing it on the largest scale in terms of influencing geopolitics, but I agree that they aren't the only ones doing it, and that if we make them stop, the problem won't go away. The media has spoken up a lot about Russia's twitter/facebook botting and shilling, but if we were to take a much closer look at the data, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to see some shady domestic political think tanks and action committees doing it to the same extent. In fact, the shadowy domestic PACs engaging in astroturfing are probably ecstatic that Russia has taken the focus (and blame) off of them! The Internet has become a ideological battleground, and at this point, anybody who has any power to gain/lose has rolled up their sleeves and entered into the fray. I'm not quite sure what to do about it.
For me, the real value that RT has to offer (and that goes surprisingly unappreciated) is that it acts as a system of checks and balances against more mainstream networks. Whenever those networks make outrageously weak (or simply wrong) claims, RT is quick to point that out. Whenever mainstream media ignore some potentially damaging topics, RT is quick to pick them up. Whenever mainstream media act as vehicles of outright propaganda, RT makes fun of them.
RT's journalist Gayane Chichakyan, for example, has become a kind of a legend among some American podcasters for asking straight and inconvenient, but certainly valid questions at State Department’s press conferences.
And while comedy shows such as The Daily Show or The Late Show with Stephen Colbert are almost indistinguishable from each other in their messages, RT's Redacted Tonight (https://www.rt.com/shows/redacted-tonight-summary/) is radically different and gives the voice to the comedy of the very far left.
I think I understand the concept of lies by omission. Perhaps RT does that. And yet, I am not sure that giving a one-sided account of events is worse than not bringing them up at all. Like that accusation of Wikileaks’ selectively targeting the democrats and being silent about the republicans — I am not convinced that this one-sidedness in any way invalidates what Wikileaks had to say about the democrats. Likewise, if RT does not report on the stories that can be damaging to the Russian side, this should not make their other stories, potentially damaging to the other sides, somehow invalid.
Hi. Sorry to single out your country in particular, but its hard to talk in general :)
We get a lot of comments in main Internet portals which present Russians as victims of NATO aggression in case of Ukrainian conflict. It always misses the point of who invaded who.
There is a lot of comments threatening Poland with nuclear conflict, in particular after US Army established its presence here.
These are examples. But it looks like a lot of comments have particular key and great consistency.
Are those comments that you are talking about online publications of some established Russian media outlets, or are they just comments of some random visitors to the sites?
As for invasion and NATO aggression, I think it’s worth reminding oneself that there are several opposite narratives battling each other and pushing different agendas — God knows whose. Russia is certainly meddling in Ukranian affairs (and it’s revolting) — but invasion? Isn’t it an act of war? Aren’t countries at war with each other if one country invades another? As for NATO, both NATO and Russia seem to be saber-rattling, each side responding to the demonstrations of the other by further threats. This is plain madness!
I just wanted to point out that Internet due to its global nature is vulnerable to attack on truth by actors with enough money and defined agenda. This kind of attack can be similar to spam/ddos attack in its nature. So basically exploiting Internet freedom.
If we don't build in mechanisms to prevent this, we will loose anyway. Even if it was possible to keep Internet free.
I see that the only positive result of my comment is that it motivated you and several Russian readers to create accounts here and take part in discussion. I hope we will have much more opportunity to participate in IT related topics. You guys are some of the best people in the field and we will all benefit from your expertise.
Thank you for your kind words. There is just one small correction I wanted to make. I created an account here a couple of weeks before this topic, to express my incredulity at an unwarranted (in my opinion) criticism of an example of JavaScript code written in functional style. But it is true that this is my longest discussion on Hacker News. Thank you for that, and please forgive me for steering the thread this way. I hope I was not being too uncivil.
Not from Poland and not in an any way affected country, but I believe I can answer your first question, and it comes down to basically Rossiya Segodnya.
Long story short, they open a news portal where tracking the ownership is almost impossible and where there is absolutely no hindsight on how do they monetize what they do, they attract readers by appealing to the Russian minorities, trying to create some sort of panic between them and hoping to create a chain reaction.
I am from Germany so I don't know about your first question.
For your second question: I myself don't know too much about this in regards to the internet, but I have read in a couple of white papers that
1: a large majority of Russians (esp. those in rural areas) have TV as their main source of news. Print is only a minority (has small relevance).
2: Most TV is controlled by the government and if they are not they don't criticize the government as there is a fear of being shut down.
3: The Russian media is said to state false Fact as well as to distort Facts/Events.
I don't have the time to link specific sources but you can find what I said if you research freedom of press on google and google scholar. There are also renown sites with lists such as a freedom of speech index. Russia ranks 148.
In the case of the Baltics, it's not so much the natives that are under the increasing propaganda. [1] It's the Russians who were transported here during the various occupations by the empire & soviets. These people weren't kicked out after the collapse of the union, but most of them have never been interested in the local culture. They haven't learned the language [2], aren't interested in going back to Russia even if paid for, and often don't hold local citizenship. They view Putin as their leader, they celebrate Russian holdiays, shoot new year's fireworks according to Moscow time, and cry about the fall of the union. Basically these are people who are waiting for the reunification of the motherland and it doesn't take much for them to eat up any propaganda that aligns with that view.
Digitally they live as Russians, they don't use facebook but use VK etc. Because they don't understand the language the only local TV/newspapers/media they consume is Russian. The local Russian media is mostly funded by the Kremlin and has their agenda aligned accordingly.
In total, it's hard not to see this as preparation work for Putin to come save all these Russians by occupying us once again.
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[1] Certainly there is the Russian troll army unit who roams the local news comment sections. However they aren't that clever. They are mostly easy to spot, have been spreading the same crap for 15 years, and are often called out.
[2] It's not just that old people don't learn the local languages. A huge number of Russians flat out refuse to teach their newborn children the local languages, insisting on Russian. The continued existance of Russian kindergartens/schools is ensuring that the division among the local populace won't go away.
In my experience the common reason among Russian parents who send their children into local language schools and want their children integrated cite "a better future" and economic opportunities.
Also, you make a sarcastic remark regarding not kicking people out as if that is what everyone does and doesn't require special mention. It just so happens that moving people forcibly around has been the modus operandi of various Russian regimes. [1] They come invade us, and then gather up the intellects and other elite members of the community and ship them off to Siberia in cargo trains. Not only that, but wives are separated from their husbands, children from their parents, families split apart and sent to different parts of the Siberian woods to make sure they won't find anyone to speak their native language with. Then people who already speak Russian are massively transported into the country to help with the Russianification efforts. [2]
To make matters worse, it's not like all of this is only some historic event that is looked at in shame like Germany and the nazis. Putin and his regime, and the local non-integrating Russians think that Soviet Union was the best thing ever and that its fall was the greatest tragedy of the 20th century.
There have been monstrous attempts by Russia at obliterating the Baltic cultures. The remaining non-integrating Russians are pawns in this culture war. I do think that we have been more than fair in offering them an opportunity to integrate into the community and to leave the atrocities of the past behind us. When they refuse, but also don't go back to Russia and keep praising the historic invading Russians as heroes. Well it's dissapointing, insulting, and frankly for our little nations it's also a case of fighting for the survival of our cultures.
> and frankly for our little nations it's also a case of fighting for the survival of our cultures.
Please forgive my insolence in asking this, but why do you feel that survival of a culture is important? I have heard these sentiments frequently from people from various former Soviet republics (the Baltic states and Ukraine being the prime example), and they have always puzzled me, because I, though Russian, can not imagine myself fighting for the Russian culture. I am quite content with the global cultural heritage of the Western civilization that I have accumulated over my life to be specifically protective of the "Russian culture". I fully appreciate that mine is not a popular position here, but I prefer not to be engulfed in whatever nationalist tendencies our country manifests, and am curious to learn why would anyone give in to the nationalist tendencies in other countries.
NOTE: I am not using the word "nationalist" in the perjorative sense that it frequently has, but in a purely descriptive sense. The notion of struggling for survival of a culture rather than simply letting it evolve into whatever it evolves seems nationalist to me.
This is definitely an interesting question which I've pondered myself before. The best answer I have is choice. In the Russian <-> Baltics case existing habits were prohibited and new ones indoctrinated forcefully. People killed & shuffled around. In the Western case new habits are acquired willfully [1] and old ones die naturally.
In practice, I would say that USA has achieved more cultural assimilation with the last 25 years than Russia could in the ~250 years of occupation. In essence Hollywood has won the hearts of the people in ways that force never could.
There are those who don't like the USA influence either, because it does reduce our own identity. For me, it's not as big of a problem as long as we have control over the changes made.
To sum it up, it's about free will & independent thought.
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[1] A cynic might say that the USA influence isn't by choice and that it's merely an illusion of choice. That while the Western cultural assimilation doesn't share methods with other attempts, it's hard to resist due to the volume & production quality of the Western media.
>Where do people get the Russian news and why do they care about what Russia has to say? I mean, I don't follow Polish news (or French news, or German news, etc.); so why would people get their information from the Russian outlets?
Russia will provide funding to various conspiracy nuts, contrarians and such, who then write and/or translate shitty "news" articles that are then consumed by people that want someone to confirm their bias.
They also pay people (located in Russia, mostly) to post pro-Kremlin opinions on the internet, and if you are not aware of that, it may seem like there's a lot of people that disagree with the "mainstream media" that are "lying to us".
Another thing they do is try and control the expat organizations of Russian speaking minorities in the West (and Central Europe too). These people are often relying on Russian language news so they are easier to influence.
They also like to finance eurosceptic political parties (e.g. National Front[1]), to try and break-up the EU.
Just to give you one answer, at least in the United States, a not insignificant number of people read or watch RT.com, and -- this is really terrible, but it's true -- they aren't aware that "RT" stands for "Russia Today" and is basically a pro-Russian news outlet. I'm not sure how you folks view Russia Today, but at least in the United States, people that know that "RT" == "Russia Today" consider it very pro-Russian, almost propaganda. People that don't know that it's a Russian news source generally just consider RT like most other news sources in the United States. I've got friends on Facebook that post RT links like they post CNN links or something and they're completely unaware of its origin.
I must confess that I too watch RT sometimes. I was initially drawn to them by the total openness of their broadcasting — I could go to their website and either watch RT America live or watch recordings of any of their major programs. I have never seen other networks do so (perhaps with the exception of Bloomberg) — and I looked at CNN, Fox, and BBC at least. So at least for this RT deserves some credit.
Now, having watched RT from time to time over a certain period, I learned to distinguish between the shows that blatantly push the Kremlin agenda, and others that do not necessarily do so and are more interested in being a non-mainstream platform of inquiry into the world affairs, and of criticism of the world policies rather than being a carrier of the Russian point of view.
Also, I couldn't help wondering about what it is that ostensibly makes RT so different from other media networks. It seems to me that if RT is propaganda (which it very well may be) then so is CNN, or MSNBC, or Fox, or even BBC. I don’t know. Perhaps, despite all my attempts to resist, I am infected by the Russian propaganda beyond cure.
With an election in just a few weeks time, two major BBC 'journalists' who support the right-wing, pro-Establishment British Conservative Party, brazenly attacking the left-wing (anti-Establishment) Labour Party candidate.
The BBC is a state broadcaster that has always been pro (British/Western) Establishment, but always in the past with a veneer of impartiality (more delusional right-wingers even absurdly accuse it of being left-wing).
Now, with the possibility of the first moderately left-wing British Prime Minister in decades, and public faith in established media at an all time low anyway, top BBC staff aren't even trying to hide their right-wing political bias any more.
> what it is that ostensibly makes RT so different from other media networks
1) Different kinds of propaganda. Fox, CNN, MSNBC are businesses that reflect the biases of audience, owners, employees, etc. RT bias is support of the Kremlin.
2) Different levels of commitment. Fox, MSNBC, CNN are businesses pursuing their own interest. Their purpose is making money. RT was set up purely for propaganda. It's purpose is spreading propaganda. The "alternative news" is merely a method to deliver the propaganda.
Fox opposed Trump but then flipped to suit their interest. RT will never oppose Putin.
If Putin decided he wanted to genocide Jews (a totally unrealistic example just to illustrate the point), RT would come up with a reason why it's unavoidable, justified, and the US's fault anyway. If Trump came up with the same idea, even Fox news would probably oppose it.
Look up Murdoch and Trump's dynamic over the past few years and you'll understand why that happened. Wrt BBC, they are both biased and incredibly inconsistent - I lost any trace of respect for them a long time ago.
I read Russian, French, and English language news from as many sources as I can find to try and get a relatively good idea of what actually happens in the world, and if you want to call out bias, try nbc before you talk about rt. Rt's reporting is closer to the reality almost every time and they much less commonly bury stories unfavourable to a certain united States party specifically.
So, I'm just talking about RT here. Obviously, it's not the only place in the world with bias. I didn't include my own RT consumption habits in the paragraph above because it's not about me, it's about RT, and how a pretty large group of Americans view it.
Weird, Bulgaria is also seemingly being targeted by systematic Russian propaganda and fake news via news sites with anonymous authors and no citations, and via fake profiles on social media sites that like, share and comment on said sites.
> and via fake profiles on social media sites that like, share and comment on said sites.
The same happens in Romania. In fact, I've called out a couple of such profiles on FB already, during the recent anti-Government demonstrations. If you're careful enough it's easy to spot them, one of them for example had shared pro-Assad news (which us Romanians don't care that much about), some traditional music that now only appeals to those 60+ and some nationalistic-sounding articles about Romania.
Basically - we see the same thing we already saw with free market. It is not free by itself. Countries and companies can use it to establish monopolies.
Freedom is not for free. It is something we need to define, establish and then continuously fight for it.