I couldn’t put my finger on why I always wake up to a mountain of notifications, but rarely get many through the daytime hours. Started checking against timezones and — perhaps unsurprisingly — most of the responses I receive either shitting on the U.S. military or Ukraine come during the prime hours of GMT+2 to GMT+4 (i.e., eastern Russian / Moscow time).
I guess it kind of makes sense. Someone literally started writing Russian in response to me yesterday, lol.
Not really. Axo usually just bans anyone that disagrees with the narrative he is trying to push. Hence, you don’t really see many active users around here that cut against the prevailing grain. Most of it either tends to be lurkers or new accounts that are probably just alts of banned lurkers.
I've seen several accounts with well over a month of consistent and explicit "Russia bad" posts, so unless this mass banning has happened in just the past week, the claim doesn't seem to hold water.
And in general, the trend I'm noticing is that this sub is skeptical of the legacy media more than anything else, and since the media right now is fervently anti-Russian, this skepticism is seen as pro-Russian as a result. Though it's not just this sub, or even just this site - in just about every social network I've stumbled upon, skepticism of the mainstream narrative is reflexively taken as a pro-Russian stance. I some, I've actually seen a dozen "slava Ukraini" posts back to back, followed by complaints about Russian propaganda. So again, if that's the current standard for unbiased editorial policy, it's only natural that anything else would seem pro-Russian in comparison.
Aside from mine, I have not seen anyone else with any sort of month-long "Russia bad" streak. I welcome any tags you have though, I may have missed them since I kind of just lurk on here and only become active once every few months. Bans occur fairly frequently on here, especially in light of how low the userbase is.
I agree that this .win is skeptical of legacy media. Frankly, I agree with that view. To that end, I totally agree that MSM is largely pro-Ukraine and exhibits a bias.
That all said, a bias alone does not mean they're wrong. There are definitely some arguments against foreign over-involvement in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict. The issue is, they aren't made here. The only arguments I see getting made are flat out "Russia is innocent and was totally justified in doing this, I blame the U.S." Likewise, even if you cite sources for people on here, you will just be met with another round of getting called a shill, Jew, racial slur, or really anything that doesn't address the point you raise.
There are good arguments to be made, and good discussion to have. Unfortunately, this site is administered in a way that is certain to make that never happen.
Thank you for providing the link to the ban logs - I wasn't aware the sub had them. And in turn I have to admit, I do see a couple of accounts there that were vocally anti-Russian - but also rather aggressive and uncivil about it - before getting the boot just last week... as well as a couple of general purpose assholes that really should've just stayed in ConPro. So overall, I think in both cases they were booted for assholery rather than political reasons.
As for arguments, the spectrum here is fairly wide, even among the Russian posters I've talked with. My own stance, especially in light of some recent events, is that the conflict is an engineered prelude to a global economic restructuring, while also serving as a weapons dump for obsolete hardware - with both sides taking advantage of it. That said, there most likely are numerous casualties on the front lines, since not everyone has gotten the memo, but overall, it's a media spectacle more than anything else. And it might be for the best, if a couple of other event chains I'm monitoring turn out the way I suspect.