• AlexanderESmith@social.alexanderesmith.com
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    1 month ago

    No. Not fuck Russians as a blanket policy. The Russian government is full of corrupt and evil bastards, but it’s certain that most Russians are the same as most other citizens; They just want to go about their business.

    I’m in favor of blocking the Russian accounts, they’re probably mostly state actors. The ones that aren’t actively sabotaging the codebase are unfortunate causalities, but it’s better than the alternative.

    • vzq@lemmy.world
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      30 days ago

      I’m really sad about this. There is a lot of computer science talent in Russia, and I’m very very upset that It Has Come To This.

      But it very clearly has.

      • AlexanderESmith@social.alexanderesmith.com
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        30 days ago

        If it makes you feel any better, experience (and a bit of intuition) tells me that this isn’t permanent. Though, it is probably only going to end after their government stops fucking up (or collapses… again…). It might be a while :/

      • Gigasser@lemmy.world
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        29 days ago

        I think it wouldn’t be bad to have the Russian devs back once the war is over, bar any other circumstances.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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        30 days ago

        Most Russians don’t have easy access to non-state propaganda media outlets. If they only have false information, they can’t be expected to form an educated opinion.

        If you haven’t seen it, I recommend taking a look at a recent post from the NYT Magazine about a Russian defector. They also made a 5 part podcast miniseries told from his perspective. NYT recently put old podcast episodes behind the paywall, not sure how to access them elsewhere, but I’ll include a link to reference if you want to look it up.

        https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/20/magazine/ukraine-russia-war-deserter.html

        https://open.spotify.com/episode/7JhUrPv08azSKIXqSvkPIV

        • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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          30 days ago

          This is actually completely false.

          Until very recently, both Youtube and telegram have been available censorship free. Almost every russian was able to access “non-state propaganda media outlets” in under ~10 seconds on their smartphones.

          NYT times is bad source on russia. They routinely whitewash russian crimes. They often leverage russian opposition sources without any critical analysis.

          • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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            30 days ago

            YouTube and Telegram are not sources of authoritative or factual information either, if anything they are even less reliable. YouTube alone is probably filled with more hours of misinformation than all news media on the planet.

            The fact you’re even suggesting them as some sort of alternative to get reliable info shows you don’t intend to have a real discussion.

            • Alphane Moon@lemmy.world
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              30 days ago

              You are either ignorant or you have an agenda (or perhaps you don’t want to consider that you were wrong).

              You were able to access authoritative russian-langauge “non-state propaganda media outlets” on YT at least as far back as the early 2010s.

              TV Rain , a generally well regarding Russian opposition channel opened their YT account on Apr 13, 2010, with the oldest listed video being with some of the first clips appearing in May 2010.

              DW on Russian (DW на русском) also started their YT channel in 2010 with clips appearing in the same year.

              Telegram did longer to get authoritative sources, but you can get BBC on it. And I am willing to be you good money that the BBC Russian service YT account appeared closer to 2010.

              I am sorry but you are wrong and you don’t understand what you are talking about.