Any Russian users here - does the average person here not wonder why so many previously acceptable services are being blocked and/or silenced? Do they not wonder what it is that the authorities want to shield them from?
Some friends, who lurk on Facebook more, do periodically share this or that post that seems to be bashing Russia, so no wonder they blocked Facebook. Same for Twitter. I think people might get more hurt by a ban of Instagram.
Another point is that people who care enough about free speech, democracy, etc. are more likely to be aware of and use VPN services, so they might still be able to access the content, but people who don't use VPN are unlikely to install it just to check some viral anti-regime post on Facebook, so maybe this is a move to prevent future growth of the audience reading news on Facebook.
Of course, take this all with a grain of salt, as I hardly use Facebook or Twitter, just Messenger sometimes. I'm mostly extrapolating from the usage by my friends and family.
Educated middle class people know what's going on, hate Putin and have been protesting it all since 2011, but there's only so much they can do against an armed police state that arrest kids and runs a torture convenor belt in prisons: https://www.the-sun.com/news/4045314/videos-putin-prisons-in...
Here in the UK RT News suddenly disappeared from the air.
As the saying goes, the first casualty of war is the truth. That applies everywhere.
It's important to recognise this.
As an exercise, search for "the ghost of kyiv" and then try to imagine what the headlines would look like if it were a actually a fake russian story about a russian pilot instead of a ukrainian one.
But it's hard to see the negative aspects of your side.
For instance, did you know that the Ukrainians essentially executed an Israeli civilian at a checkpoint because they though he was Chechen? Our media pick and choose what they report and how they report it.
I saw a thing about it on Reddit earlier today/yesterday (seemed to be about the Russian channel?), and this[1] seems to be about the American wing.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/03/russia-backed-cable-news-sta...
Looks like RT is/was very government-backed and spreading a ton of misinformation - so I can understand why people would want to shut it down (for spreading verifiably incorrect information), but on the other hand can also see why it's not a good look :/
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/ukraine/comments/t5ug4p/the_entire_...
[1] from The Economist: https://archive.ph/T61OQ
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/04/russia-appears...
It's easy to build domestic support for almost any war in the early days. It's the long hard reality of war that turns people against it.
If most of the media around you is state-sanctioned and pro-Putin, it's super easy to go along with Putin's justifications.
One doesn't have to agree with a viewpoint to find value in knowing what the other side thinks, instead of being told what they think.
FOX News and MSNBC are a form of propaganda as well.
this is how propaganda works
they tell mostly truth, but 5-10% of it of propaganda
you won't notice it on first sight, otherwise you wouldn't watch it
but watching it for years daily have eroded your brain already
> If your bar for “not propaganda” is 95% truthful, what news site is left that passes that test?
You misunderstand the test. A better way to state it would be: "they tell mostly truth, but 5-10% is deliberate, institutionally-sanctioned lies."
A lot of people can't seem to tell the difference between false statements and lies, and conflate the concepts all the time. Add hindsight into the mix, and it gets even worse.