Ukraine bans its top social networks because they are Russian(economist.com)

28 pointsby JumpCrisscross9 tahun yang lalu22 comments

Ukraine bans its top social networks because they are Russian

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21722360-blocking-websites-may-be-pointless-it-could-help-president-poroshenkos-popularity-ukraine?cid1=cust/ddnew/n/n/n/20170519n/owned/n/n/nwl/n/n/na/Daily_Dispatch/email&etear=dailydispatch

23 comments

nitwit0059 tahun yang lalu

Probably less that they're "Russian", than that they hand over all their data to the Russian government. VK was taken over, seemingly because of pressure to turn over Euromaidan protestor's names.

owebmaster9 tahun yang lalu

So do Facebook and Google to US gov. But I do agree that Brazil should follow this trend and shutdown Google and FB.

slim9 tahun yang lalu

Which proves social networks are political assets

civilian9 tahun yang lalu

I'm not a fan of blocking things on the internet, but this seems like a good move for them. If your people aren't going to perform SecOps, then you need to.

I wonder how many Ukrainian fighters have posted videos or pictures on VK?

konart9 tahun yang lalu

If you check ukrainian conflict subreddit or some of the Facebooks accounts of the volunteers you will find out that they were actively using VK to track their enemies (army and mercenaries from Russia) and to communicate with "sympathisers" from Russia.

Anyway - now they will post them on Facebook - what does it change? It is an open info regardless.

gragas9 tahun yang lalu

"If my people aren't going to support me, I'm going to make them support me."

marichards9 tahun yang lalu

And what metadata was included?

vivekd9 tahun yang lalu

HNers will mass downvote and throw vitriol at anything that doesn't mean complete freedom of the internet all the time no matter what the cost. It's like a religious dogma to these guys, complete digital freedom no matter what the cost or consequence, practical considerations be damned. And like any fundamentalist religious dogma, those who question it are punished.

But for ordinary society, I think most people realize that having your enemy control your media is a terrible, terrible idea that will mean almost certain defeat in wartime.

Ukraine realizes that complete free internet all the time is not worth losing a war with Russia over, and I say power to them.

pjc509 tahun yang lalu

Reminds me of bellingcat's excellent work in tracking the MH17 missile launcher on social media, e.g. https://www.bellingcat.com/news/uk-and-europe/2017/04/04/pho...

Grue39 tahun yang lalu

Meanwhile Russia has banned LinkedIn, WeChat, LINE and plans to ban Telegram as well. At least Ukraine has a very good excuse.

gyrocode9 tahun yang lalu

Limiting access to information is always a bad decision. If someone wants to access banned resources, there is a way to do that with VPN.

subterfudge49 tahun yang lalu

It could be a problem if Russian government is getting all the data. A rising concern about Facebook in India remains the same.

markovich049 tahun yang lalu

(1)

gragas9 tahun yang lalu

To me, this just shows that Poroshenko does not represent Ukraine. It's yet another example of a failed attempt to label Russia as the baddies.

kesselvon9 tahun yang lalu

they're literally engaged in a war against russia, so can you blame them?

krick9 tahun yang lalu

More like a war against themselves, it seems.

kesselvon9 tahun yang lalu

Donbass militias are moscow backed and funded.

gragas9 tahun yang lalu

More than half of Crimea was always ethnic Russian. If the people of Ukraine want to be part of Russia, let them.

It is not the case that everyone thinks Russia is some horrible, evil country.

kesselvon9 tahun yang lalu

Front lines aren't in Crimea. At least learn a little before making definitely statements

gragas9 tahun yang lalu

His people are using Russian mediums of communication. Banning them is like denying reality. Perhaps Poroshenko is engaged in a war against Russia, but clearly a lot of his people are not.