Will Netflix refuse to air deceitful Russian propaganda?
"Given the current situation, we have no plans to add these channels to our service"
Users may have to stream elsewhere as Netflix has defied demands to air Russian propaganda television channels.
Putin’s campaign to control all media sources across the country hit a bit of a wall yesterday when Netflix decided it would not comply in airing state-run channels such as Channel One, a station that has close ties to the Kremlin and is notorious for false information.
“Putin has spent the past year, especially since Alexei Navalny’s return, methodically and effectively putting an end to the last remaining vestiges of independent media,” said CNN’s Bianna Golodryga. “He’s been doing this gradually for years but nothing as ruthless as this past year — either through arrests, intimidation killing their business models, and/or by labelling them as foreign agents.”
“Now that he and the Kremlin have had total control of the media, the propaganda machine (via state media) has convincingly turned average Russians onto his side,” Golodryga said. “Though they don’t want war, they believe him when he says (as he did today in his hour-long revisionist history lesson) that the West is the aggressor and has always wanted us to fail, thus corrupting our ‘brothers in sisters in Ukraine,’ while Russians are the aggrieved party.”
A Russian law came into effect on March 1 which requires all media platforms with a reach of more than 100,000 people, to distribute free Russian news and entertainment channels, both of which constantly spew anti-Ukrainian Russian propaganda.
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For now, Netflix is currently still operating in the county and has yet to elaborate on how it plans to avoid the regulation.
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