Online Activists are Cold Calling Russians - and Messaging Them on Tinder (cnn.com) 47
"I don't know if you know a lot about what is actually happening right now in Ukraine...."
CNN reports: There's silence on the other end of the line. "The real truth is that it is a terrible invasion..."
This is one of dozens of cold calls that Marija Stonyte and her husband make every day to people in Russia from their home in Lithuania as part of a volunteer initiative aimed at penetrating Russia's so-called digital iron curtain.... [M]any Russians know little about what is unfolding....
Desperate to break through, people around the world are trying creative ways to connect with Russians. Online activists Anonymous claim to have hacked Russian TV channels to broadcast footage from Ukraine. Others, like Stonyte, are trying a more individual approach. They're cold calling or messaging strangers in Russia, hoping their personal pleas will disrupt the Kremlin's propaganda — and potentially even help put an end to the deadly war.... The couple began calling businesses, museums and restaurants in Moscow and St. Petersburg, hoping to tell them about what was happening. Days later they stumbled across CallRussia.org, an initiative launched March 8 with the tagline: "Make the most important call of your life."
Co-founded by Lithuania-based creative agency director Paulius Senuta, the initiative aims to cold call 40 million phone numbers across Russia. The team gathered publicly available phone numbers in Russia and created a platform that randomly generates a phone number from the list. A user can opt to call over the phone, Telegram, or WhatsApp, and at the end of the call, a site pop-up asks the user whether they got through, and if so, if the call went well. The idea is based on Senuta's belief that Russian people have the power to end the war if they have access to free information and understand the human suffering in Ukraine.... With the help of psychologists, Senuta's team of about 30 people put together a script to guide the calls. They didn't want to get into a confontation — instead the goal is to "convey the human tragedy and the fact that they don't know about it."
In just one week after the CallRussia launch, thousands of volunteers made 84,000 phone calls, he said....
Henkka, a Finnish man based in Estonia, who asked to only be identified by his first name, set his location on dating app Tinder to St. Petersburg, got tipsy, and went on a mission to tell Russians about the war in Ukraine. Although Instagram and Facebook have been blocked, dating apps are still accessible. "How To" guides have sprung up on social media platform Reddit, advising people how to use Tinder's passport feature — which allows users to connect with people in other countries — to share information about Ukraine with Russians. Users share tips on how to create a credible fake account and match with as many people as possible without getting banned by the Tinder algorithm — Tinder says it may delete accounts using the app to promote messages.
CNN actually has a two-minute audio recording of one of Stonyte's phone calls. "I know that it is not safe in Russia to speak about these things. So I will just tell you, and I really hope that you can spread this message in private or to the circles of people you know...." (Stonyte's voice seems to quaver.) "The thing is that, I know that there is a lot of propaganda that is happening..."
"I agree with you," responds the person on the other end of the line.
Stonyte eventually says "So just — as much as you feel safe, and as much as you feel comfortable, please just silently, but, spread this message, so that people know..."
CNN reports that "Stonyte says few people hang up. Instead, most fall into one of two categories — those who argue back, and those who listen, she said. Stonyte believes many people may not want to respond out of fear the call could be monitored and they could face punishment...."
CNN reports: There's silence on the other end of the line. "The real truth is that it is a terrible invasion..."
This is one of dozens of cold calls that Marija Stonyte and her husband make every day to people in Russia from their home in Lithuania as part of a volunteer initiative aimed at penetrating Russia's so-called digital iron curtain.... [M]any Russians know little about what is unfolding....
Desperate to break through, people around the world are trying creative ways to connect with Russians. Online activists Anonymous claim to have hacked Russian TV channels to broadcast footage from Ukraine. Others, like Stonyte, are trying a more individual approach. They're cold calling or messaging strangers in Russia, hoping their personal pleas will disrupt the Kremlin's propaganda — and potentially even help put an end to the deadly war.... The couple began calling businesses, museums and restaurants in Moscow and St. Petersburg, hoping to tell them about what was happening. Days later they stumbled across CallRussia.org, an initiative launched March 8 with the tagline: "Make the most important call of your life."
Co-founded by Lithuania-based creative agency director Paulius Senuta, the initiative aims to cold call 40 million phone numbers across Russia. The team gathered publicly available phone numbers in Russia and created a platform that randomly generates a phone number from the list. A user can opt to call over the phone, Telegram, or WhatsApp, and at the end of the call, a site pop-up asks the user whether they got through, and if so, if the call went well. The idea is based on Senuta's belief that Russian people have the power to end the war if they have access to free information and understand the human suffering in Ukraine.... With the help of psychologists, Senuta's team of about 30 people put together a script to guide the calls. They didn't want to get into a confontation — instead the goal is to "convey the human tragedy and the fact that they don't know about it."
In just one week after the CallRussia launch, thousands of volunteers made 84,000 phone calls, he said....
Henkka, a Finnish man based in Estonia, who asked to only be identified by his first name, set his location on dating app Tinder to St. Petersburg, got tipsy, and went on a mission to tell Russians about the war in Ukraine. Although Instagram and Facebook have been blocked, dating apps are still accessible. "How To" guides have sprung up on social media platform Reddit, advising people how to use Tinder's passport feature — which allows users to connect with people in other countries — to share information about Ukraine with Russians. Users share tips on how to create a credible fake account and match with as many people as possible without getting banned by the Tinder algorithm — Tinder says it may delete accounts using the app to promote messages.
CNN actually has a two-minute audio recording of one of Stonyte's phone calls. "I know that it is not safe in Russia to speak about these things. So I will just tell you, and I really hope that you can spread this message in private or to the circles of people you know...." (Stonyte's voice seems to quaver.) "The thing is that, I know that there is a lot of propaganda that is happening..."
"I agree with you," responds the person on the other end of the line.
Stonyte eventually says "So just — as much as you feel safe, and as much as you feel comfortable, please just silently, but, spread this message, so that people know..."
CNN reports that "Stonyte says few people hang up. Instead, most fall into one of two categories — those who argue back, and those who listen, she said. Stonyte believes many people may not want to respond out of fear the call could be monitored and they could face punishment...."
Blue and yellow flags (Score:1)
Blue and yellow flags are going up on my college-town neighborhood.
That'll show those Russians!
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yeah. is there any evidence these types of acts actually work? i don't think they do.
Sure they do. They fully signal your virtues about whatever the latest thing is.
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They DO mean support. Absolutely irrelevant if "latest thing" counts from 2014, when tsar begun setting scenes, grabbing land - like he's entitled, or from the early morning Feb 24th of this very year. Let's care! Let's think how to add our drop of ability to the just, that belongs. Year 2022 has brought us one very special nation, which was deprived right of having its homes intact. Totally and absolutely, just because. Not fair. Genocide is such not. World got to hold back. Unfortunately, Russian populati
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There's a difference between showing respect and virtue signaling, but you are too post-modern to see any difference.
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Re: Blue and yellow flags (Score:1)
Re:Blue and yellow flags (Score:5, Interesting)
I posted a Ukrainian flag on my porch with a sign that said (in Russian) Warship go F- yourself. After a couple days, an older guy came knocking on my door to express his appreciation for the flag and sign. He had fled Ukraine with his family during WW2 as a small boy and came as refugees to the US where he's been ever since. I was glad to have heard his story and been showing my concern for his relatives still in Ukraine.
Send pictures if possible (Score:2)
The article mentions Tinder is still open, so why not post pictures from russoldat.info [russoldat.info] and either ask the person if they know who the dead Russian soldier is, or if someone argues back after calling them, ask if one of the pictures is a family member.
Same thing with text messages if they're not blocked. Send a message with an attached picture and ask the same questions.
With seven generals killed and three to four times that number of colonels killed, word will have to eventually get out at the staggering
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Pictures of dead generals could help the Russians, by angering them. Russia and the Soviet Union before them did a great deal of "tuning" the news to support their immediate goals. Ukraine will need to be very careful to avoid a hint of the kind of torture and abuse that haunted the US invasion of Afghanistan. Any hint that they commit the sorts of atrocities committed by US personnel in Abu Ghraib will cost them the moral, fiscal, and military support currently pouring in.
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Ukraine will need to be very careful to avoid a hint of the kind of torture and abuse that haunted the US invasion of Afghanistan.
At this point, with all the rapes commited by Russian soldiers [twitter.com], the deliberate [twitter.com] destruction [twitter.com] of cities [twitter.com] and towns by Russian artillery and planes, the looting [twitter.com], the murdering [twitter.com] of [twitter.com] civilians [twitter.com], Ukraine would be forgiven if they outright shot any Russian soldier for any reason. People would excuse it because of the suffering they've had to endure for the last month. Yes, Russians might b
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Ukraine will need to be very careful to avoid a hint of the kind of torture and abuse that haunted the US invasion of Afghanistan.
At this point, with all the rapes commited by Russian soldiers [twitter.com], the deliberate [twitter.com] destruction [twitter.com] of cities [twitter.com] and towns by Russian artillery and planes, the looting [twitter.com], the murdering [twitter.com] of [twitter.com] civilians [twitter.com], Ukraine would be forgiven if they outright shot any Russian soldier for any reason. People would excuse it because of the suffering they've had to endure for the last month. Yes, Russians might be upset, but since they're the ones who are invading, who cares. If you invade someone else's country you should expect to be killed.
Forgiveness is OK, it's laudable, but someone else's brutality isn't an excuse for you to do it. Militaries need to be professional, period. I'm saying this with Eddie Gallagher in mind and all the excuses people make for him. There's no excuse for unprofessionalism. You can't be elite and unprofessional. Might makes right is an observation, not an instruction, just like nature is cruel - we don't have to be.
Personally, I expect Ukraine to remain professional in the face of Russian bullshit, and they c
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Re: Send pictures if possible (Score:2)
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Too late for that, and impossible anyway.
Russian TV shows footage of destroyed Mariupol [youtube.com] and says, "Look what the the Ukrainian Nazis did.
That is why freedom of speech is so important. If no one is willing to oppose the official narrative, then the official narrative wins.
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As a follow up, reports of a mass grave in Bucha with possibly 300 civilians [twitter.com] and girls as young as 10 [twitter.com] being raped by Russian soldiers.
As I said, Ukraine would be fully justified in killing every Russian soldier they come across, especially those retreating from the north of the country. No one except whining Russians would say they wouldn't be justified for doing so. At least it's happening [twitter.com] in the Donbas oblast.
Re:Send pictures if possible (Score:4, Insightful)
Up to 50K wounded (ratio of wounded to dead in modern combat is roughly 1:4 - same source you are quoting is stating 15000 dead). Where are they?
Some are at field hospitals, but most of the other wounded are sent to occupied Crimea or sent [ibtimes.com] to [businessinsider.com] Belarus [dw.com]. It is also known that Russia is not retrieving [republicworld.com] its dead and wounded.
They see what you do not see - documentaries from Mariupol - the people mutilated, cut to bits and tortured by the neonazi's from the Azov batallion.
Which of course never happened but is in reality the aftermath of Russia's deliberate shelling of Mariupol, including hitting a maternity hospital with pregnant women and a school which was clearly marked with the word 'children' written around it. But Russia deliberately, and knowingly, struck both those places where civilians were, completely destroying their lies of only targeting military targets.
They have seen the unedited footage of the Russian girl raped and chopped into bits as a part of the initiation ritual with swastikas carved into her body with a knife (that was shot by a USA reporter by the way).
Which also never happened. It's just another lie put out by the true nazis in the Wagner Group who literally have swastiaks tattooed on their body. This story reminds of the lie Russia put out when it first invaded Ukraine in 2014. They claimed a 10 year old girl was killed by a Ukrainian artillery shell. They showed the spot and everything. The BBC hunted down the reporter and camera man who reported the story and asked why they reported something which never happened. Hear for yourself [youtube.com] in their own words on why they reported a lie.
They have seen the footage of the prisoners of war which the Kharkiv neo-nazis shot and left to die on camera from blood loss.
Funny thing, That also never happened. Yes, a video exists which the stupid people in Russia will believe, except if one watches the video you will never see the pools of blood which should exist. Nor are any of the supposed Ukrainian troops wearing their distinctive arm bands, nor are the uniforms the ones the Ukrainian army uses. So again, fake, but good propaganda to keep the stupid riled up and distracted from the thousands of dead Russian soldiers.
They have seen the full footage of Zelensky's interview to Fox USA, including the section which Fox edited out - the part where he admits Azov commits war crimes and he is cool with that.
I watched that portion and nowhere does Zelensky say he is or was "cool" with the crimes anyone in Azov committed. What he does say that volunteers were doing what they could in defense of Ukraine when Russia invaded, and later people from that group were prosecuted and sent to jail. He also stated that Azov is no longer a separate entity but was disbanded and its members put into the Ukrainian military and follow Ukrainian law.. I also read the same thing years ago when complaints were made about Azov and how they were forcibly disbanded.
However, considering Russia is using literal nazis from the Wagner Group to commit crimes in Ukraine, there can be no complaints about what happened years ago from volunteers. Nor can anything be said considering the vast number of crimes ordinary Russian soldiers are committing. Everything from mass rapes to murdering of civilians to looting.
So, good luck trying to tell them something they have seen about 30 times on Teleg
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GP is an outlet for Russian propaganda. Probably paid.
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Remember when you posted that Mariupol would fall on March 23. Did that happen?
You, like the Russian propaganda you disseminate, have zero credibility.
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When are you going to talk about the execution of civilians by Russian forces?
Other things the west can do (Score:2)
Re:Other things the west can do (Score:4, Interesting)
Why not use the frozen Russian assets to cover remaining Ukrainian debts and put the balance toward rebuilding? Doing it this way still has the desired effect of helping Ukraine but leaves the debtholders whole (which leaves them far more apt to want to participate in the rebuilding effort). Some cancellations might make sense due to specific details of collateral and what the funds were used toward, but I doubt they all make sense, fiscally speaking.
I think you'll have a much easier time selling this, more middle ground, approach.
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Why not use the frozen Russian assets to cover remaining Ukrainian debts and put the balance toward rebuilding?
I guess you would have to thaw them first and probably cease them to be able to do that. /s
Cats! (Score:2)
Make your profile pic a photo of someone carrying a terrified, traumatized cat that was just rescued from a building in Ukraine, or is being carried by a refugee wearing a backpack filled almost entirely with their cat's favorite food as they flee the country. Bonus points, if the person carrying the cat has injuries that clearly came from the cat.
Russians love cats as much as Americans do, and pics like those will give them nightmares, even if they don't care about the war's human toll, or if they think i
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Woman carrying her black cat to safety during air raid: https://twitter.com/TreyYingst... [twitter.com]
more: https://www.boredpanda.com/ukr... [boredpanda.com]
Umm ok (Score:2)
How is this going to end/win the war exactly? Russia is an authoritarian regime, it only needs 10% of Russia to support itself. This scheme has the same chance of working as getting a butterfly in Australia to flap its wings and hoping the chain of events from that wing flap ends the war.
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How is this going to end/win the war exactly? Russia is an authoritarian regime, it only needs 10% of Russia to support itself. This scheme has the same chance of working as getting a butterfly in Australia to flap its wings and hoping the chain of events from that wing flap ends the war.
It needs a lot more than 10%. Authoritarian regimes survive by creating the belief that the majority of the population supports the leader. Sometimes that belief is legitimate, and you need to spread accurate news to start eroding that support. Sometimes that belief is an illusion and you just need to show people that dissidents are now the majority.
The war probably doesn't end in a popular revolution in Russia, but it could. And even if it doesn't the chances of a revolt are being factored in by not only P
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It's not like you can pass some threshold where if enough people are against the regime they can affect anything, they'll just all be imprisoned or forced to comply.
No? There's NO threshold above which it is not practical to imprison everyone, or force everyone to comply? Above which if they crack down on them, the economy will collapse the rest of the way? That doesn't sound correct at all.
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Apparently that threshold is ~3.5% of the population.
In the U.S.? Yes.
In Russia? No.
It is crazy to me to pretend different governments would not have vastly different numbers.
Apparently no-one remembers the breakup of the Soviet Union came from the top, not the bottom.
SHRUG (Score:2)
Likewise, inside Russia phone lines trying to connect outside the country will go straight to recording.
Like, do people expect anything different?
Mother warned me (Score:2)
Mother warned me against massaging strange Russians on Tinder.
Propaganda (Score:2)
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The first casualty of war is the truth, as the old saying goes. The west seems desperate that our propaganda gets through to Russia's population while doing their best to shut down Russian propaganda.
Desperate? Using that word there is ridiculous. The rest of the world is not desperate, only Ukraine. There is a certain sense of urgency, however, in that Putin is acting like a spectacular dumbfuck and/or an insane man, and there's a concern that he could get some of his underlings to launch some of their nukes. Probably not all of them, probably not even all the ones that they think work, but enough of them to be a real problem for the rest of the world.
It's possible for Putin to be deliberately cultivat
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Don't put people in danger please (Score:2)
Russia is an authoritarian regime akin to a dictatorship. There are things one should not talk about for the safety of the people on the receiving end. It is very irresponsible to call random people and send them information that could get them imprisoned or killed. It's just like, if you have friends in mainland China, you don't want to discuss politics with them online, even if they would agree with you about Tibet or Tian-an-Men. You don't want your friends to get abducted because of you.