Russia Is Banning Discord (pcgamer.com) 103
Russian authorities are considering a ban on Discord, citing unspecified legal violations. According to the Russian daily newspaper Kommersant, the ban may happen "in the coming days." PC Gamer reports: The opening salvo has already been fired. The Russian state media regulator Roskomnadzor has issued five separate rulings relating to Discord since September 20, which can all now be used as justification for an upcoming ban. Say what you will about authoritarian regimes, but they love their bureaucracy. Kommersant quotes an anonymous official source as saying the ban is being considered for violations of Russian law: needless to say, these violations have not been detailed, nor are likely to be.
Russian users have also complained about periodic outages on Discord over September, with many resorting to VPNs, and both the web and mobile versions of the platform affected. Should the ban become a reality, the big losers will be Russian players and developers, with no obvious domestic replacement. "The problem is that for Russian developers, communication with the community, including the international one, and technical support are implemented through Discord," said Vasily Ovchinnikov, head of Russia's Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry. Today, a Moscow court fined Discord 3.5 million roubles ($37,675) for, apparently, failing to restrict access to banned information.
Russian users have also complained about periodic outages on Discord over September, with many resorting to VPNs, and both the web and mobile versions of the platform affected. Should the ban become a reality, the big losers will be Russian players and developers, with no obvious domestic replacement. "The problem is that for Russian developers, communication with the community, including the international one, and technical support are implemented through Discord," said Vasily Ovchinnikov, head of Russia's Organization for the Development of the Video Game Industry. Today, a Moscow court fined Discord 3.5 million roubles ($37,675) for, apparently, failing to restrict access to banned information.
Headline: Russia Is Banning Discord (Score:2, Informative)
Journalism 101
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There was a vote??
Banned information (Score:3)
Putin has a small dick, even smaller than his short stature would suggest.
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False equivalence or whataboutism is hardly the stirling defense you imagine it to be.
I disagree -- it's precisely as full of hot air as I would expect a stirling defense to be!
:)
But to the spirit of your remark: agreed -- a sterling defense it surely isn't.
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Russia bans US social networks, the US responds by banning Russian propaganda -- including Russian propaganda divulged by American traveling companions who fell for Russian propaganda.
By the way, did you know the same "non-governmental" organizations that had been spreading Russian-backed anti-vax and anti-mask rethoric during COVID are now spreading pro-"peace" / anti-military support for Ukraine / pro-Russian imperialism propaganda?
And, guess what? The same traveler companions of yesteryear are falling fo
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the US responds by banning Russian propaganda
Canadian here.
Can you outline what specific Russian propaganda the US government has banned, and how they've banned it?
Because as near as I can tell, all the Russian propaganda sites appear to be fully accessible in the USA.
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Can you outline what specific Russian propaganda the US government has banned, and how they've banned it?
The US government pressures online platforms to shadow ban and explicitly ban channels of Russian propaganda. They don't do that directly themselves because their 1st Amendment doesn't allow for that, but "asking nicely", "as a favor", or merely hinting in a "it'd be nice if someone..." is allowed. The end results are things like this [nytimes.com].
Soft censorship functions well as it allows plenty of deniability. A handful of individuals and groups will still deliberately go to those ostensibly-not-censored sources and
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Hahaha boris this barely even parses as english my friend.
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Because many, many times a self-declared third [wikipedia.org] way [wikipedia.org], or position [wikipedia.org], or even one that believes itself to be a fourth [wikipedia.org], aren't really, they're just rebrandings.
Not always, sure, but most often than not, yes.
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I can be opposed to internet service bans while also being opposed to sending hundreds of billions of tax dollars to prop
If those two positions weren't linked to a same cluster of propaganda initiatives, I'd believe that. But since you're basically spreading slight variations of a well-known propaganda cluster, your claims of independent thinking are... questionable. Rather, it looks exactly what someone with high IQ would construct as a rationalization for a low-Kohlbergian group-alignment.
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Where were you when Putin took over Crimea and Georgia?
The same place I was when China was mowing through Hong Kong protesters, and Israel massacring Palestinian children: wishing very hard the Powers That Be would do something about it.
Lo and behold, for once they're doing exactly what they should! A rare event, but it happened! For the wrong reasons too, but fsck that detail. The important thing is they're doing the right thing for a change.
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So why aren't you over there fighting?
Because I'm overweight and I have zero combat experience.
Oh, wait, were you expecting me to be ashamed of something? If so, sorry, but I'm shameless. :-D
Re: Banned information (Score:2)
Ok Ivan. Time for bed now.
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And you look like someone who has bought into CIA propaganda about Ukraine. Obviously the only options are we are both mindless drones subject to government propaganda and incapable of independent thought because you see a similarity between my independent view based on actual real history of the region and my long standing loudly anti-government waste stances on here and whatever bullshit you read from the CIA about how everyone who disagrees with the official government narrative can only believe that because they're dumb victims of Putin propaganda.
Bottom line nobody cares about your personal feelings and opinions. If you can't support the mindless CIA conspiracy babble you are spewing with factual evidence you shouldn't expect anyone to give a flying fuck about what you have to say or believe.
Did you also believe in Iraq having WMD because Bush said you're either with us or against us?
No, like yourself the US government failed to provide evidence to support the nonsense they were peddling.
Where were you when Putin took over Crimea and Georgia? Why weren't those worth hundreds of billions of tax dollars?
If billions of tax dollars could have changed the situation I would have supported it. The willingness of the world to uphold the UN charter protects ever
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The UN has one core mission: providing a platform to help avoid a second nuclear war, WW2 having been the first and, so far, only one. Everything else is an add-on of convenience since the infrastructure is already there and can be used for other things, but ultimately secondary.
At this one core mission it has been quite successful. There were some close calls, but no Nuclear War 2 yet. That's an 80-years-long successful streak.
At some point it'll fail at its one core mission. We'll have WW3 / NW2. The surv
Re: Banned information (Score:3)
"I have only ever in my lifetime seen Israel respond with force rather than initiate force"
Then you should open your eyes. Israel has been using force against Palestine literally constantly since the sixties.
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SD/CIA puppet government of a not strategic country that was never an ally while also not being a pro-Putin stooge.
Gotta love those claiming not to be sucking Putler's dick while parroting very specific Russian propaganda.
How come no one gave a shit when Putin took over Georgia and Crimea?
You are confused over what giving a shit actually means. This is akin to having someone randomly drop dead vs that same person recover from a life threatening illness over a period of years. You are basically making the argument nobody gave a shit about the person dropping dead because nobody spent millions and years helping the person who random dropped dead recover from death. Simply giving a shit
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...
How come no one gave a shit when Putin took over Georgia and Crimea? The entire west just shrugged. Twice. But this one is somehow worth wrecking our economy and depleting our weapon stores. Weird shit. CIA can get some people to believe anything.
4sec take: Um, because they are different? A huge amount of software and industrial products are created in Ukraine and traded globally.. vastly more than Crimea and Georgia combined. Also, Ukraine is not a small territory already deep within Russian sphere? Maybe NATO cares much more because Crimea and Georgia do not share a large land boarder with actual *Poland*.. tink for 4 seconds before arguing fr
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I think also many in the west were naive. They saw into Putin's heart and knew they could trust him. All that engineered bombing of his own citizens, we can look past that in the name of peace. Oops. Or maybe, we just invite the dear comrade Putin to one of our fancy G7 soirees, and once he sees how nice we have it he'll reform himself and be a nice guy. Oops. Ok, ok, he invaded Georgia, but he's just made a cease fire agreement now due to some top quality diplomacy.. What, he's attacking again? But it
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Putin is no worse than communist US states which enjoy and celebrate banning all kinds of stuff, social media stuff included but not exhaustively.
Your echo-chamber improperly uses the word 'communist' a lot.
Re: Banned information (Score:2)
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It's a good think you're anonymous, that sort of stupidity would be highly embarrassing if your name came out.
"Jerry, come up here this instance!"
"But mom, I'm posting..."
"I don't care, you come up out of that damp basement right now or no more Ring Dings for you."
"Ok, ok, don't make me do my own shopping again."
"Good. Now explain to me why I'm getting all these stories about you being a stooge for Putin?"
Re: Banned information (Score:2)
He has FASD. Look at the symptoms, see for yourself.
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He didn't work at a McDonald's though.
Re:Banned information (Score:5, Funny)
You just made Russia ban Slashdot as well.
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Non-suicidal?
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Funny I can find RT on almost all sites. Just some of them automatically add a disclaimer that "Hey this is russian state media"
Time loop (Score:5, Interesting)
I witness history repeating itself.
Wonder where the equivalent Berlin wall will come down after isolationist Russia scrapes the bottom of its coffers.
Re:Time loop (Score:4, Informative)
Maybe their regime will collapse when they reach the bottom of their coffins. They're using the same stupid tactics they used against Germany. That pig of a general, Zhukov, had no regard for his own men. And the current Red Army also thinks of troops as cannon fodder. It was the Russian winter and the vast arsenal of the USSR that beat Hitler in Russia. Stalin said it best, quantity has a quality all its own. Too bad that also meant Russian soldiers.
Re:Time loop (Score:4, Informative)
Lend-lease also helped quite a bit, with lots of US shipments to the USSR.
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Not just a bit. Without it, Russia would have been defeated.
Re: Time loop (Score:2)
Yeah a lot of people, especially Russians, really miss this one. Their little communist experiment really deprived them of nearly all manufacturing capacity. A lot of people have heard the stories about only a few actually having a weapon, then when that person dies the guy behind him picks up his gun. They wouldn't have even made it that far without lend-lease. Then combine that with Hitler's strategic blunders and the overall failure of the Luftwaffe to do anything meaningful other than temporarily pin do
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Putin is near his end. His body can be seen shaking in public and he's a germaphobe, probably due to strong cancer treatments. His body grows ever skinnier and his face puffier. He's on some funky drugs. He's beginning to resemble a lollypop.
The war and related sanctions haven't been beneficial to regular citizens at all. They don't need more land, their population is shrinking even. They want economic progress and stability, not an empire without any living young men in it.
Their next leader will thus likel
Re: Time loop (Score:3)
Re:Time loop (Score:4, Insightful)
I witness history repeating itself.
Wonder where the equivalent Berlin wall will come down after isolationist Russia scrapes the bottom of its coffers.
Not really as there already is a clear border with patrols and what not to stop Russians escaping to the west. Much of it utterly inhospitable (I.E. most of the Finnish border) or having natural obstacles like rivers. Not to mention that unlike East Germany, Russia's neighbours are hostile to Russians, so it won't be easy for them to integrate/find jobs.
Russia is very much becoming a pariah state but don't make the mistake of thinking it'll be the same as last time.
Re:Sad but not surprising. (Score:4, Insightful)
US with OTAN are at war with Russia.
I must be living under a rock, because I've never heard about that.
Not that it isn't likely to happen though, I will know it happened when the nukes start flying.
Re:Sad but not surprising. (Score:5, Interesting)
Tencent has a big stake in Discord. Which makes this matter all the more interesting.
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When Putin goes to bed he checks for OTAN under his bed and USA in his walk in closet
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Only in putler's paranoid imagination. Unfortunately, he is not in a lunatic asylum and has the means to broadcast his lunacy to conspiracy nutters all over the world.
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Only in putler's paranoid imagination. Unfortunately, he is not in a lunatic asylum and has the means to broadcast his lunacy to conspiracy nutters all over the world.
Instead of calling me insane, perhaps you could try to understand the situation a little more deeply or at least argue about what I've said. It's much more polite and respectful when you reply to someone you don't know.
Of course not, there's no declaration of war if you stop at semantics. There has been no declaration of war. I can see that my use of the term “war” is provoking some very negative reactions.
So I'm going to go into a little more detail or precision.
The United States is one of the
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Russia playing the victim card while murdering people in a neighboring country
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Whataboutism at its finest!
It's not like the US has ever been attacked by other countries or their agents, right?
"Thousands of years"?
Ruzzia isn't much older than the USA.
Stop your moaning. The world is an exciting place to live right now. Get out there and live it.
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Discord Inc. is a US company.
US with OTAN are at war with Russia.
Russia get economical sanctions being reinforced.
Anyone is surprised that Russia is not nice with US companies?
If US is at war with Russia then by the same measure of absurdity Russia is madly in love with the US. The Russian war machine is after all powered by US microelectronics and I've seen video of Russian command posts where discord is clearly visible on their screens.
Russian people to this day routinely roam about Mordor sporting western brand clothing and iPhone's role of status symbol has only increased due to scarcity. I get a kick out of Russian propagandists trying to justify Russia's love affair with
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Yeah but russians need access to these precious global town squares?! /s
IRC (Score:3, Interesting)
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Matrix is not a bad replacement - especially as it's open standards / open source / open API, distributed and quite easy to bridge to other systems (including IRC). Closed ecosystems, where one company uses technical and legal means to keep information within their system, with their chosen apps, ads and user-data-mining, are much worse. Like Facebook, whatsapp and a bunch of others.
(and sure, Russia is a dictatorship, rapidly going totalitarian. No wonder the start restricting anything enabling opposing th
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It's too bad; we could use a more mobile-friendly IRC-like to break the hold of proprietary chat.
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What's worse is that apparently, everyone are the baddies, and there's no other planet to move to.
We all know why they're REALLY doing this (Score:4, Interesting)
"Today, a Moscow court fined Discord 3.5 million roubles ($37,675) for, apparently, failing to restrict access to banned information."
That banned information?
"Ukraine still exists"
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Pretty much anything that undercuts Putin's supporting propaganda and politics is currently an offense in Russia, yes.
This is just performance art to slap a veneer of legitimacy on that. Part of dominating the public is lying to their faces and forcing them to pretend they believe you.
BUT... it's also basic common sense not to allow the enemy to infiltrate your communications. I'm kind of surprised Russia hasn't just said 'fuck it' and blocked the Internet at its borders except for approved channels.
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That's where it end if successful, but Trump's lies are currently about riling up his base. They're not being forced to pretend they believe the lies, they either believe them or don't care that they're lies.
I mean (Score:1)
The violations are specified. (Score:4, Informative)
https://t.me/mash/58063 [t.me]
"The court fined Discord 3.5 million rubles in a case of failure to remove prohibited information. We are talking about materials related to prohibited LGBT and pedophilia.
In July 2023, the platform was already fined 6 million for 18+ content with minors. Now Roskomnadzor can formally demand to ban Discord's work in Russia."
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If a story here is about Russia, Apple, or taking the temperature of the Earth - it's propaganda.
Presumably such payments keep the lights on?
Are they trying to make Russia attractive? (Score:3)
Why can't we have nice things?
Must be a different discord. (Score:3)
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used to be low barrier, people swarmed to emoji IRC, now they complain when the privately-owned-centralization chickens come to roost
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I don't know. Discord works. It is easy to use. Most people I know seem to use it. It kind of "just worksTM"
Eventually, we'll move to something else.
Good news for me (Score:2)
Personally I consider this good news. Software developers increasingly offer Discord as the only support option. I have no idea why. It has a horrible user interface and a huge barrier to entry / steep initial learning curve. About a year ago I actually got an account in order to get support with a Steam game I had bought. The process was terribly confusing due to a previous aborted attempt to make an account. The support threads were so chaotic that I got the impression it's hopeless to find anything. Some
In the end (Score:2)
What we knew as the internet is going to become local to the Country you live in ( and Government approved ) versions of itself. :|
In other words, completely useless.
Now what will Russian disinformation peddlers use (Score:2)
to communicate with right wing influencers in America?
Court's Real Disdain for Discord (Score:2)
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Ironically, it is possible to setup channels that function exactly the same as a web-based forum with all the benefits of real-time chat making the entire argument moot. And just like regular web-based forums, the ability to find information/help is highly dependent on how well the information is laid out.
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1. I'm surprised Discord even bothered to send a lawyer.
2. If I were the lawyer, I would challenge this judge even more. Want to make not even thinly veiled threats? Cool, now I'm going to push ALL your buttons and really piss you off. Doesn't matter if I win or lose. Doesn't matter if you try and throw me out that window like so many others. The angrier the judge, the more I actually won. Leading to my next points to try and anger them...
3. If someone is capable of searching on Yandex, they're capable of u