How Putin Controls the Internet and Popular Opinion in Russia

[Zenaan Harkness]

On 9/9/15, grarpamp <grarpamp at gmail.com> wrote:
> https://theintercept.com/2015/09/08/how-putin-controls-the-russian-internet/
> The key paragraph in Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan’s new book, The
> Red Web, comes surprisingly late, after the authors have described the
> long and ambitious construction of a wide-ranging, all-penetrating
> Internet surveillance and censorship system in Russia.
> ...
> Just as the Soviet system discovered that it did not need to exert
> total pressure in order to control its population, so the Kremlin has
> now demonstrated that it does not need to block every byte in order to
> exert utter dominance over information.

"In other words, by the 1970s the system had determined the minimum
amount of pressure required to turn these people into its willing
[information] executioners — and it was minimal indeed. A little bit
of privilege, even a decent salary combined with the opportunity to
practice one’s trade, was often enough."
...

A really unique situation, nothing like "the west". Just as well we
have the example of the USA in demonstrating true protection of
freedom of speech, democracy and the international rule of law -
almost had me worried there for a moment.