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.
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.