Finnish Newspaper Uses Secret Room In Counter-Strike To Bypass Russian Censorship (theguardian.com) 59
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Guardian: A Finnish newspaper is circumventing Russian media restrictions by hiding news reports about the war in Ukraine in an online game popular among Russian gamers. "While Helsingin Sanomat and other foreign independent media are blocked in Russia, online games have not been banned so far," said Antero Mukka, the editor-in-chief of Helsingin Sanomat. The newspaper was bypassing Russia's censorship through the first-person shooter game Counter-Strike, where gamers battle against each other as terrorists and counter-terrorists in timed matches. While the majority of matches are played on about a dozen official levels or maps released by the publisher Valve, players can also create custom maps that anyone can download and use. The newspaper's initiative was unveiled on World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday. "To underline press freedom, [in the game] we have now built a Slavic city, called Voyna, meaning war in Russian," Mukka said.
In the basement of one of the apartment buildings that make up the Soviet-inspired cityscape, Helsingin Sanomat hid a room where players can find Russian-language reporting by the newspaper's war correspondents in Ukraine. "In the room, you will find our documentation of what the reality of the war in Ukraine is," Mukka said. The walls of the digital room, lit up by red lights, are plastered with news articles and pictures reporting on events such as the massacres in the Ukrainian towns of Bucha and Irpin. On one of the walls, players can find a map of Ukraine that details reported attacks on the civilian population, while a Russian-language recording reading Helsingin Sanomat articles aloud plays in the background. This was "information that is not available from Russian state propaganda sources", Mukka said. The map has been downloaded more than 2,000 times since its release on Monday. According to Mukka, an estimated 4 million Russians have played Counter-Strike.
In the basement of one of the apartment buildings that make up the Soviet-inspired cityscape, Helsingin Sanomat hid a room where players can find Russian-language reporting by the newspaper's war correspondents in Ukraine. "In the room, you will find our documentation of what the reality of the war in Ukraine is," Mukka said. The walls of the digital room, lit up by red lights, are plastered with news articles and pictures reporting on events such as the massacres in the Ukrainian towns of Bucha and Irpin. On one of the walls, players can find a map of Ukraine that details reported attacks on the civilian population, while a Russian-language recording reading Helsingin Sanomat articles aloud plays in the background. This was "information that is not available from Russian state propaganda sources", Mukka said. The map has been downloaded more than 2,000 times since its release on Monday. According to Mukka, an estimated 4 million Russians have played Counter-Strike.
not banned in russia (Score:5, Insightful)
until now. good work, publicizing this!
Re: not banned in russia (Score:3)
Actually not a bad idea. I'd actually find it amusing if Putin banned video games. I think that would be a great way towards pushing the populace further towards boredom in the name of their Fuhrer that they love so much. See how much they love him afterwards, in case deindustrialization isn't enough.
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That's assuming his own people don't bomb his ass [reuters.com] first. Someone obvious already doesn't like the guy. Unless you really believe Ukraine was behind it (hah).
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The Russians released a movie showing the attack, and assured the world that Putin was unscathed.
I however think the movie and the news do raise an important question: what exactly was Putin doing on the roof of the Kremlin in the middle of the night? Fixing some tiles maybe?
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Trying to catch some fresh air, and he knows from experience how dangerous standing close to windows can be for high-profile Russians.
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Yep, somebody seems to be _really_ stupid.
Amateurs! (Score:4, Funny)
Well they were!! (Score:3)
There's a secret place and I hid kewl stuff there. Just don't tell anyone or th......
Meh (Score:2)
Meh. It's not used anymore now.
These tactics are dumb (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: These tactics are dumb (Score:3)
Banned ideas can't be exchanged via normal channels
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And it will inevitably be harder when it is banned, particularly given people trying to evade such a ban might end up with a price on their head, so they have to retain at least some kind of anonymity.
Re: These tactics are dumb (Score:5, Insightful)
Telegram exists. Pretty much all Russian and Ukrainians who are online use it. And they talk to each other all the time on it. Stuff like evidence about Bucha-style massacres of civilians, or the cluster mining of Donbas cities are there if people want to read about it.
Most people already picked their side and automatically assume other party's claims are lies, and images and videos are doctored in some way. Or the worst outcome: "it's true and other side deserved it". You'll find all these opinions on Telegram nowadays. The war has been going on long enough at this point.
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why would anyone believe news articles at all?
[insert "one does not simply believe news articles" meme]
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Why not?. Many parts of video game are nothing more than a medium of information exchange. I got my first Gulf War reports over IRC when that shit started. I talk to friends all over the world in games. We exchange information while they are dancing around my smoking carcass in team fortress 2. It is just another avenue for information to flow out of.
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you probably wanted to reply to the parent. i have no problem with getting info from heterogeneous sources. my point was that *any* information from anywhere is to be taken with a generous dose of salt and healthy skepticism in everyday life. in war, however, *any* information is to be expected to be at least 90% propaganda, and professional news outlets in particular are professional propagandists and very accomplished doing exactly that. so there's that :-)
tl;dr: whatever the information it is you're give
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Why would anyone believe news articles they found in a video game?
I know, right? Everyone knows that in Soviet Russia, games play YOU!
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Re: These tactics are dumb (Score:2)
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I still never quite understood why an attack by a terrorist organization based in Afghanistan and orchestrated by a Saudi national warranted an attack on Iraq, but in all fairness, Saddam Hussein did spend a hell of a lot of time pretending to have weapons of mass destruction as a deterrent to Iran. I guess he just did that too well.
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Why would anyone believe news articles they found in a video game?
The biggest reason would be that people who can access external news sources are able to vouch for the content.
But beyond that, it would be for the same reason that people end up believing any information source:
- It sounds reasonable.
- It's internally consistent.
- It doesn't try to rewrite it's own history.
- When it's possible to externally verify the information it reports the facts it reports hold up.
Propaganda outlets can certainly try to replicate some of those qualities but it's actually pretty hard.
F
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>Certainly, Bucha is just one incident
It's actually not. The main problem is that there have been a lot of massacres of civilians like Bucha, and they all have the same circumstances. Russians roll in expecting liberator's welcome. They get lots of Ukrainian flag waving protesters in the streets. Soldiers start thinking that these are "nazi collaborators". Interrogators with Russian mafia background get called, and you get Bucha style massacres of protesters after they go home for the evening over a few
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Why would anyone bother downloading a shitty map that basically has no userbase and that no one is playing on?
It's a PR stunt from our main newspaper that has been having financial problems for quite a while at this point. And one of its main selling points in recent years has been it being very pro-NATO, and now that we're in NATO that just doesn't attract attention as well.
I guess this is the next move.
Paging Helsinki Helga (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Paging Helsinki Helga (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead, how about "Loose phones attract drones" ?
Life imitates art, kind of (Score:2)
In the show Occupied (also imitated: russia invades its neighbor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]) one of the faction uses a video game to communicate secretly in-game. I think it looked like DayZ.
It's difficult to detect if you don't already know about it being used, and looks just like any other gaming communication. Easier of course once it's discovered, but if they wanted to ban it, they'd have to ban the whole game which would get plenty of people mad.
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LOL. Nice try Comrade.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/... [hrw.org]
https://www.amnesty.org.uk/pre... [amnesty.org.uk]
Re:Propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
There seems to be a small uptick recently in pro-Russian comments here. Meanwhile, the Russian army went nowhere during its so-called winter "offensive". Maybe Putin's offensive was intended to be online only...
Re:Propaganda (Score:4, Interesting)
There seems to be a small uptick recently in pro-Russian comments here. Meanwhile, the Russian army went nowhere during its so-called winter "offensive". Maybe Putin's offensive was intended to be online only...
It's all they have left. They have cancelled their May Day parades because, wait for it, they don't have enough military equipment [cnn.com] to put on parade. On top of which, they would normaly have something called the Immortal Regiment where people would parade by holding pictures of those who died in military service. Think of the tens of thousands of people who would have to march by this time. Think of how that would look when the last update Russia gave on the number of soldiers who died in Ukraine was about 6,000 dead [reuters.com].
At this point Russians know Ukraine will launch their counter-offensive, it's only a matter of when. And when it does happen, there's nothing Russia can do to stop it. They are on the verge of scraping the bottom of the barrel in both men and materiel and with the flood of western assistance, Ukraine will roll through their conscripted lines. It's already happening in a few places. Just wait until things get rolling. Then you'll see the Russian trolls flinging all the crap they can hoping someting will stick.
Re:Propaganda (Score:5, Insightful)
And they start to crack even here.
Russian propaganda was good. I mean really good. You often had to look twice and three times before you could even begin to ponder whether what you read there is true, or rather, how much of it. They were awesome at mixing and matching facts with fiction, they were the masters of deception.
Today, what you get from their propaganda outlets is a joke. Maybe they're running out of sufficiently good sounding facts, but by now you can almost certainly say that if it's from a Russian source, it's garbage. Just assume the opposite and it's likely you have a fact at hand. If they accuse their enemy of wanting to do something, expect them to already do it. It's like clockwork. Predictable.
That's not propaganda, that's embarrassing.
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Comrade? You are showing your age. Russia hasn't been communist for 30 years.
The little man in charge there is just as KGB as he was 30 years ago.
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The little man in charge has been a mere baggage carrier for the mayor of St. Petersburg 30 years ago. Should have stick to his last.
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Share your opinion on Egyptian pyramids next (it wasnt Egyptians, it was aliens)
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Your boy dreamed up:
pretty soundly refuted in both Western and Russian media
"pretty" sound Western media refutation would require at least *one or two* outlets putting credible false flag or internal strife evidence. *None* did this, it exists only in his confused rambling head. I did see lots of conservative statements describing a shit-show, where facts are difficult to p
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it wasnt Egyptians, it was aliens
Get a haircut, hippie!
Nice move (Score:2)
If they can spread porn in Valve games [steamcommunity.com] then they can spread dissident news articles as well!
I'm not sure we need a metaverse (Score:2)
Russia should ban CS. I might play again. (Score:2)
Alas, this will not be very effective (Score:2)
Russians will simply Rush B and not find the secret room.