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The Internet

Russia Says It's Not Planning To Block YouTube or Cut Itself Off From Internet (reuters.com) 72

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Russia is not planning to block Alphabet's YouTube, the minister for digital development said on Tuesday, acknowledging that such a move would likely see Russian users suffer and should therefore be avoided. From a report: Russia has blocked other foreign social media platforms, but despite months of fines and threats against YouTube for failing to delete content Moscow deems illegal and for restricting access to some Russian media, it has stopped short of delivering a killer blow to the video-hosting service.
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Russia Says It's Not Planning To Block YouTube or Cut Itself Off From Internet More

Russia Says It's Not Planning To Block YouTube or Cut Itself Off From Internet

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  • So (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @05:32PM (#62544160)

    Russia is definitely going to block YouTube.

    • Re:So (Score:5, Interesting)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @05:39PM (#62544188) Journal

      When Sweden and FInland decided to join NATO, it gave Russia a wakeup call.

      Yesterday someone showed up on state TV saying Russia is not doing well in Ukraine, and needs to be more friendly with the rest of the world [youtube.com].

      • When Sweden and FInland decided to join NATO, it gave Russia a wakeup call.

        Yesterday someone showed up on state TV saying Russia is not doing well in Ukraine, and needs to be more friendly with the rest of the world [youtube.com].

        I'm guessing that today that guy is manning a radar tower somewhere above the arctic circle. They're mailing him his clothes ...

        • Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)

          by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @07:02PM (#62544408) Journal

          He's showed up a couple times on state TV recently, with a rather pessimistic message. He isn't opposing Putin. His message was approved.

          The real question is why his message was approved.

          • "His message was approved. The real question is why his message was approved."

            If he lives, then we will know that's true.

            If he dies by accident, or a sudden malady, or commits suicide, then we will know that he went off-script.

          • Re:So (Score:4, Interesting)

            by quantaman ( 517394 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @03:27AM (#62545146)

            He's showed up a couple times on state TV recently, with a rather pessimistic message. He isn't opposing Putin. His message was approved.

            The real question is why his message was approved.

            If it was an approved message he wouldn't have to spend the first two minutes of the clip giving them excuses as to why things were so bad to make the medicine go down easier. Nor would he have to constantly argue with the moderator.

            Putin isn't sitting there personally approving every TV exchange. It's a softer form of control where people who buck the narrative get pressured after the fact and told not to do it again.

            What that clip shows is that system is starting to break. Partially because the reality is so bad that they feel compelled to speak out (and know they'll be proven right in short order). And also because Putin's grip on power is slipping. The rumours of Putin being seriously ill are growing and that combined with the state of the war is weakening Putin's power.

            All his enforcers are now focusing on protecting their own interests for when Putin falls, and the risk of ending up on Putin's naughty list no longer bears the same long term consequences.

            Make no mistake, that fellow is criticizing Putin on Russian State TV and he feels safe doing so, that's a significant piece of information.

            • The reason he is allowed on TV is because:

              A) He supports Putin.
              B) Things are actually much worse than he says.

              Censorship in Russia is stronger than ever.

              • The reason he is allowed on TV is because:

                A) He supports Putin.
                B) Things are actually much worse than he says.

                Censorship in Russia is stronger than ever.

                I think that's too simplistic. He probably supports Putin, but like everyone he's having more doubts and starting to express them. The reason he can get away with it is because everyone else is having their own doubts and expressing them as well.

                He's on TV because the producer, in addition to towing the party line, is also trying to generate ratings and even satisfy their own journalistic integrity. Last time this retired colonel got on TV he probably got good ratings and minimal push back, so the producer

        • Excellent "Mission Impossible" reference!
        • Not necessarily. At some point the Russian leadership will have to figure out how to reconcile the vast gulf between what they've been telling their population and reality. This could be a first step in softening them up for the bad news.

          • You sure it's not the other way around? Western media seem to be the ones needing to reconcile the vast gulf.

            Like for example right now on google news headline "Mariupol falls to Russian forces as defending troops evacuated - BBC News" . Um... "evacuated"? That implies they were rescued and flying to some hospital in Kiev/Germany whatever. But in reality, they are "captured", "surrendered", they are literally going to Russian controlled hospital and to prison/tribunal after that. See the difference? So agai

            • Gawd, you guys' propaganda is as duct-taped as your drones if this is the best you can come up with.

              • Propaganda? Are you saying Mariopol fighters (from my example above) are being greeted by their family members right now? Bright future ahead of them after this evacuation huh?

            • The original news reports that came out talked about a negotiated evacuation. This might have been wishful thinking or might have been an error. Earlier, civilians were evacuated in the true sense of the term. And there were statements that negotiation was happening for the evacuation of injured soldiers. It wasn't immediately publicly clear what that would look like. Those negotiations were obviously not publicized. CNN, BBC, and every other news outlet is starting to use the term surrender now so th

      • More text, less video: https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com]

        I wonder if the anchors keeping quiet were worried and thinking "omg, he's going off script, I don't have any lines in my scripot for what to say, should I push the panic button that cuts us off the air to be replaced by patriotic music??"

        I am surprised a lot that he was allowed to talk so long and eloquently. Can you imagine Tucker Carlson to have allowed a guest with a contrary view to have talked for so long without constant interruptions or insults

        • I wonder if the anchors keeping quiet were worried and thinking "omg, he's going off script, I don't have any lines in my scripot for what to say, should I push the panic button that cuts us off the air to be replaced by patriotic music??"

          Normally when that happens they argue back loudly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          The BBC has been neutered by the government. They don't really challenge government ministers anymore. Even Newsnight doesn't really probe much, or challenge obvious lies that are contradicted by the facts.

          Channel 4 still does, which is why Channel 4 is next on the chopping block. Yesterday a C4 journalist pointed out to Boris Johnson that he must be furious with the person who agreed the Northern Ireland Protocol, that person being Boris Johnson. That kind of questioning won't be tolerated for long.

    • I didn’t think they were going to but now that they said they won’t odds are 90% they’re cutting themselves off.

      Oh well Luckyo see yah when Pooters finally kicks the bucket.

      • This is actually a really good point. I think you're right. If they were not going to do it, they wouldn't have said the opposite, or anything at all for that matter.

      • Re:I didn’t think until (Score:4, Insightful)

        by v1 ( 525388 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @08:29AM (#62545600) Homepage Journal

        Every day is "opposites day" with Russia it seems.

        They're so used to gaslighting their citizens and are shocked that it's not working on an international level.

        It works when you control the press, but that only works inside your own borders. Outside your borders, video of what you're doing is pretty damning, and claims of "it's being staged, ALL of that is being staged!" gets less and less credible as time goes on and the agreeing independent sources start to pile up.

        In the end though I don't think they really care. The song and dance at the UN doesn't accomplish much for or against them. When the members are seeing video from dozens of sources showing the same exact things from multiple vantage points, and russia stands up and yells "it's all being staged, we're being framed!" they're just laughing at him. Nobody believes it outside russia, but I don't think they care. In a war, the fighting parties are referred to as "belligerents", because they don't feel they're accountable to anyone else. The same is true for drunks, and for russia right now.

        I've always wondered just how effective sanctions really are. We've seen this on countries like Iran and North Korea, and they seem belligerent about it, they don't seem too phased by it. I mean, their PEOPLE are certainly affected, but the government doesn't seem to care. They're not representing their people, they're representing the people in power in their government, and those few see the citizens as tools and resources only, so their actions cause sanctions which affect people, which just appears as a payment / trade-off for them to continue to do whatever it is they're doing. It's a sort of a "cost of doing business". From that mindset, it's okay for them to continue to do their thing as long as the cost doesn't get out of control.

        And when you control the media, it's pretty easy to spin the citizen's suffering to blame the people dishing out the sanctions "for no good reason" since the people don't get to see WHY their country is being sanctioned. This picks up and moves the bar quite a distance and lets the government continue to do its thing for MUCH longer than an outside observer would reasonably believe is possible. That's kind of where we are right now. "The Russian citizens won't stand for it! They'll march in the streets and riot and..." No, not really. As far as they believe right now, the whole world is the "bad guys". That's what control of the media means. The government doesn't have to struggle to convince the people their propaganda is true amidst the other news stories showing the truth. The truth doesn't get published, only the propaganda, and so that's what everyone believes. Or even if they KNOW they're being lied to, it doesn't matter much because they're not getting the other viewpoint. When all you hear are lies, knowing you're being lied to doesn't magically make you know the truth. And if you're always being lied to, today's lies are no different than yesterday's lies even if something "worthy of revolution" is happening in your midst. It's just another day for them.

      • I came here to post the same thing. Remember when Gorbachev told Reagan "Nobody's going to build a wall."

    • Russia is definitely going to block YouTube.

      Nah, they need it for their state propaganda videos.

      • They have their own propaganda social media platforms and video sharing platforms. See China.
  • If they cut themselves off from the internet, how will they be able to get their messages to everyone's uncles to post on Facebook and Twitter to make Thanksgiving and election day so much more uncomfortable?

  • Non-stop backfire (Score:5, Insightful)

    by GotNoRice ( 7207988 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @05:46PM (#62544210)
    Almost all of Putin's goals have failed and most have backfired. He was worried about NATO expansion, but his invasion is prompting the biggest NATO expansion in modern history and uniting western nations in ways we have not seen in decades. Cutting off access to certain websites is creating a Streisand effect, making people want to visit those sites even more using VPNs, etc. What was supposed to be a quick and glorious invasion has instead shown to the world the decrepit and dysfunctional reality of what the Russian military has devolved into. Russia is now in a war with NATO, suffering significant attrition, without any NATO troops even having to be on the battlefield.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      But dictators often get desperate when their ego is heavily whacked. They are use to yes-men telling how great they are. So watch out for the wounded angry bear.

    • Ruble collapse? No Europe paying for gas in Rubles? Yes Cut off most of Ukraine from the Black sea? Yes

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by DVLNSD ( 9457327 )
        Rouble collapses? Yes. They keep it up artificially because it's not convertible in majority of countries. So, they might as well set the exchange rate to 1:1 with $
        Europe pays for gas in roubles? No. There is a nasty scheme with Gazprombank that allows russia to replenish it's currency reserves, but EU countries still pay in Euros according to agreements.
        Cut off most of Ukraine from Black sea? No. Say hello to Snake Island :D
        • There are two exchange rates. The one in Moscow and the one overseas. They vary widely. European countries should be glad to pay for gas in Rubles at the official Moscow rate. They can buy the Rubles overseas for half that price!
        • I guess those FX charts are just Russian disinformation? It's up since before the invasion, and this with the dollar strengthening considerably over the same period. https://www.xe.com/currencycha... [xe.com]
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • They say they don't? It means they will do the reverse. This is just the russian way. The way of a shameless bastard.

    We Poles know how russians think. In fact, we understood for centuries - too bad nobody listened.

  • Of course (Score:5, Funny)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Tuesday May 17, 2022 @05:56PM (#62544234) Journal

    They need all the how-to videos and StackOverflow pages to keep all the Microsoft shit running, just like we do.

  • Putin has proven them to be but an empty shell, and a very weak shell at that. As for the nuke threat, anybody over 60 has been there before.

    • I spent much of my childhood planning on surviving the expected Russian attack, then (after an older neighbor joined the AF) my late teens just wishing they would push the button and get it over with

    • The good news might be that their nukes probably work as well as the rest of their equipment. They do need periodic maintenance. But the odds are that some still work...

      • The good news might be that their nukes probably work as well as the rest of their equipment. They do need periodic maintenance. But the odds are that some still work...

        They have about ~1.3k warheads deployed, and about 750 of those are ICBMs. Even if only 10% of those worked, they have enough to melt ever major US and European city. But anyway, detonating that many nukes would exterminate most higher animals on earth as it would block out the sun for years killing all plant life. All that's setting aside what would happen when the US and others retaliate.

        And yeah missile defense is mostly worthless when it comes to stopping more than one or a few rogue missiles. This was

        • Putin understands MAD perfectly. Dont buy the “better take me seriously I’m crazzzzyy” schtick that Russia is playing. They know that a strategic nuclear war means that that Russia ceases to exist. The US and the west are fairly spread out. There are only a handful of large cities that mean anything to Russia. If those vaporize, there’s no recovering for that civilization.

          My money is on MAD holding up.

          • The only problem with that argument is that, if Putin is dying, he may not care about the continued existence of Russia.

            • Re: (Score:3)

              by sd4f ( 1891894 )

              I don't buy it. He's one man, and giving out orders is completely reliant on other people carrying them out. In a sense, I think Putin has played the political game rather well, right up to the point where it became more than words. That is to say, warfare no longer is his domain, he can't directly influence how things happen, purely because he's now reliant on hundreds of thousands of other people to do his bidding, and clearly they're not reliable.

              So even if he's dying, I don't think he's in the same leve

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Khyber ( 864651 )

          "And yeah missile defense is mostly worthless when it comes to stopping more than one or a few rogue missiles. This was enlightening:"

          Your youtube video is absolute garbage. We've got galvo-operated excimer LASERs that could intercept a missile the second it hits the horizon. There is no race against time any longer. And there's no missile that's going to dodge a beam of light - in order to detect it, the light has to already be hitting it.

          And those LASERs are megawatt-class. They can punch a hole through a

          • Did nobody pay attention to the "Star Wars" program we had in the 70s and 80s? That shit didn't work.

            FTFY

          • Your youtube video is absolute garbage.

            I'm waiting for your references. No, but good talk though.

            And those LASERs are megawatt-class.

            MEGA huh? That sounds real big.

            Lasers can't punch through things like... clouds. This is well understood... because, you know, they are light. Hope we aren't attacked on a cloudy day. They are also range limited. We struggle to build lasers that are able to reach hundreds of miles (on a clear day). You think we have laser defense systems within a few hundred miles of every large city.

        • This keeps getting repeated. Sometimes by honest people who are genuinely scared. And sometimes by Moscow propagandists. Here's a slightly more realistic assessment.

          https://www.lesswrong.com/post... [lesswrong.com]

          Thankfully nobody knows for sure since we've never had a global thermonuclear war. But even the most pessimistic don't expect extinction.

          That doesn't mean one should go around looking for a nuclear war. But for many (most) people, the consequences of a nuclear war are for more appealing than the con

          • And sometimes by Moscow propagandists.

            Oh please. Can't you just jump straight to calling me a racists?

            This keeps getting repeated. Sometimes by honest people who are genuinely scared. And sometimes by Moscow propagandists.

            Okay, maybe only 2 billion people die, and others are left to eat rats in caves for the next 10 years. Fair enough.

            That doesn't mean one should go around looking for a nuclear war. But for many (most) people, the consequences of a nuclear war are for more appealing than the consequences of living under Putin's rule!

            Many (most) people aren't being threatened with living under Putin's rule.

    • I used 2019 GDP data, from The World Bank [worldbank.org], and it came out as about 12% the GDP of China. That jibes with what I'd heard previously that its economic output was 10%. I used the 2019 data because it's pre-Covid, and of course pre-war. I'm hard pressed to imagine that it's weathered Covid better, and the war is going to crush it. They could be on their way to having 5% or less of China's economic output, which was about 2/3 of the USA in 2019 (but growing faster and projected to catch up).

      So unless their

    • As many of my school book reports as feasible, were on the book Fail Safe.
  • Perhaps it is because Youtube is the last place where RT and Sputnik are available in EU?

    • These crapdrains are not on YT any more, in the EU or elsewhere. Only accessible through their own websites.

  • The adult livestreaming services haven't pulled the plug on Russia (or vise-versa) yet, either. That site with a name that sounds like it came from Idiocracy is still loaded with nonplussed looking young Russians, who are willing to perform sexual acts on camera in exchange for tips. I wonder if tipping online Russian adult entertainers is a violation of US sanctions?

    I'm sure there's a market segment who finds this kind of stuff really titillating, but from my perspective, it just seems kind of tragic.

  • Now if only he could get his youtube money.

  • As far as the minister says it, it stays probable. But as soon as Putins talking head Peskov says the same, denying YT ban, then it will definitely happen in a few days.

  • Who's blocking whom? (Score:3)

    by kmoser ( 1469707 ) on Wednesday May 18, 2022 @01:58AM (#62545048)
    Forget Russia blocking YouTube. Wake me up when YouTube blocks Russia.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's interesting that Russia seems to think it has good enough propaganda that it doesn't need to block YouTube.

      This could affect some Westerners. YouTube subscriptions are expensive and one way to get them cheap is to use a VPN to make it seem like you are in Russia, so you get to pay the Russian price which is about 1/10th the price in Europe. Brazil is another popular destination for VPN cheapskates.

  • Because If Russia ever did block Youtube there would be a revolution within days because everyone wouldn't be distracted by all the cute kitten clips and realize just how fucked up their government is.

    same can be said of many other countries as well.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by DVLNSD ( 9457327 )
      Unfortunately, no. They have (recently DDoSed) their knockoff version called rutube, but most of propaganda is shared on TikTok, Telegram and their Facebook knockoff vkontakte. Revolution lead by people is impossible in russia. There is however slight possibility of coup from within the government.

  • Because in Warmonger Putin's Russia, Internet blocks Russia.

  • Can we just call it Google like normal people?

    We aren't a marketing arm of Google, we presumably are not owned or paid by Google, so just call the company Google like everyone else.

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