{"id":13402,"date":"2024-09-21T09:03:29","date_gmt":"2024-09-21T09:03:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=13402"},"modified":"2024-09-21T09:26:56","modified_gmt":"2024-09-21T09:26:56","slug":"how-the-kremlin-might-get-past-rt-bans-to-spread-its-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/?p=13402","title":{"rendered":"How the Kremlin Might Get Past RT Bans to Spread Its Message"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Social media companies may try to ban RT, the Russian state media broadcaster. But the network has proved in the past to be a wily adversary when confronted with efforts to silence it.<\/p>\n

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Major American social media companies sometimes describe the task of identifying disinformation or other malevolent material pushed online by state actors as an endless game of cat and mouse.<\/p>\n

This week several of them made a significant play in that game by booting<\/a> RT and its related Russian state-owned media network off their platforms, a move that in the short term will sharply reduce the network\u2019s audience numbers, media analysts said. But the Kremlin, when thwarted in the past, has quickly devised new ways to get its message out, they noted, and RT can move to other outlets for distribution.<\/p>\n

Take what happened just two years ago, when Canada and the European Union banned RT outright. Viewership in different countries for channels like RT Deutsch and RT France immediately cratered, but within days new pages appeared that exactly mirrored RT under different, unrelated names that were not blocked and popped up in internet search results, experts noted.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis does not collapse their audience,\u201d said Mr. Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, referring to the new ban. He coauthored a report<\/a> examining the continued spread of RT content after the earlier ban, which was prompted by Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. \u201cIf you are a really hardcore RT follower, you\u2019ll find a way to access it,\u201d he said, \u201cWhat this really hurts is their ability to span platforms, to reach new audiences, to get in front of people who are not actively seeking out RT.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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During the last decade, the Kremlin moved to strangle all independent domestic media, driving much of it out of the country. But it also worked to create a state-run international broadcast network to end what President Vladimir V. Putin called a Western \u201cmonopoly\u201d on information globally. RT is the central pillar of that network.<\/p>\n

The online pages of RT and other, related outlets like Sputnik built a worldwide audience on Facebook of more than 88 million followers, according to data released on CrowdTangle early this year. RT\u2019s basic message that the West remains an imperialist aggressor meshed well with widespread distrust of the United States and Europe.<\/p>\n

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Social media companies may try to ban RT, the Russian state media broadcaster. But the network has proved in the past to be a wily adversary when confronted with efforts to silence it.Major American social media companies sometimes describe the task of identifying disinformation or other malevolent material pushed online by state actors as an endless game of cat and mouse.This week several of them made a significant play in that game by booting RT and its related Russian state-owned media network off their platforms, a move that in the short term will sharply reduce the network\u2019s audience numbers, media analysts said. But the Kremlin, when thwarted in the past, has quickly devised new ways to get its message out, they noted, and RT can move to other outlets for distribution.Take what happened just two years ago, when Canada and the European Union banned RT outright. Viewership in different countries for channels like RT Deutsch and RT France immediately cratered, but within days new pages appeared that exactly mirrored RT under different, unrelated names that were not blocked and popped up in internet search results, experts noted.\u201cThis does not collapse their audience,\u201d said Mr. Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund, referring to the new ban. He coauthored a report examining the continued spread of RT content after the earlier ban, which was prompted by Russia\u2019s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. \u201cIf you are a really hardcore RT follower, you\u2019ll find a way to access it,\u201d he said, \u201cWhat this really hurts is their ability to span platforms, to reach new audiences, to get in front of people who are not actively seeking out RT.\u201dDuring the last decade, the Kremlin moved to strangle all independent domestic media, driving much of it out of the country. But it also worked to create a state-run international broadcast network to end what President Vladimir V. Putin called a Western \u201cmonopoly\u201d on information globally. RT is the central pillar of that network.The online pages of RT and other, related outlets like Sputnik built a worldwide audience on Facebook of more than 88 million followers, according to data released on CrowdTangle early this year. RT\u2019s basic message that the West remains an imperialist aggressor meshed well with widespread distrust of the United States and Europe.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and\u00a0log into\u00a0your Times account, or\u00a0subscribe\u00a0for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?\u00a0Log in.Want all of The Times?\u00a0Subscribe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13404,"comment_status":"close","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13402"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13405,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13402\/revisions\/13405"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medexperts.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}