If merch is an indicator of political success, Kamala Harris has picked the right man to be her running mate for the upcoming US elections: nearly one million dollars worth of Harris-Walz camouflage baseball caps have already sold since August 6, when Harris asked Walz to join the ticket as her vice-presidential nominee (and then posted the video to Instagram, obviously). What makes Walz appealing for the Democratic party? He comes from rural America, has served in the military, he might be a Taylor Swift fan and will be key for Vice-President Kamala Harris to secure votes in the Midwestern states. A behind-the-scenes story of the political match says picking a running mate is no different from picking a husband or at least, a person you want to have lunch with every day for several years to come.
Following what has been described as “the largest electoral fraud in Latin America’s history”, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian government has escalated digital surveillance and repression in the country. The surveillance program has included use of the government-owned messaging app VenApp to collect reports about opposition figures, video surveillance and the constant use of drones to watch citizens, and “Operation Knock-Knock” – arbitrary detention, violence and doxxing of activists, journalists and even minors.
On the 16th anniversary of the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, Ukrainian troops launched an unprecedented surprise incursion into Russian territory. Margarita Simoniyan, the head of Russia’s RT Network and the Kremlin’s chief propagandist, called on her 556,000 followers on X to “pray and keep praying” as Ukrainian soldiers entered the city of Sudzha. The anniversary of the Georgia invasion, which many in the region see as the true beginning of Putin’s policy of aggressive expansion, may be a coincidence, but pro-Ukrainian internet isn’t seeing it as such.
WHAT’S GOING ON WITH YOUTUBE IN RUSSIA?
Amid panic over the Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region, one thing that’s flying under the radar is the fact that the few anti-Putin Russians still left in the country are rapidly losing last bits of access to alternative news sources. The reason: Youtube is the latest platform under siege in Russia, as the country continues to isolate its internet from the rest of the world. Coda spoke with Sarkis Darbinyan, co-founder of Roskomsvoboda, the first Russian public organization operating in the field of digital rights protection and digital empowerment on the Kremlin’s latest strategy. Read our Q&A here.
C: Why is Russia slowing down YouTube and why now?
D: This has developed gradually. There have been many concerns about YouTube, not political ones related to social protests, but rather technical issues. How to block it? And how to block it without affecting other Google services, which, of course, could turn most Android devices into bricks. It apparently took them some time to figure this out.
Currently, the blockage is not complete. YouTube is still the number one video platform in Russia in terms of users. This means that if it were completely blocked, most Russians would access it through VPNs and cross-border channels. This could potentially bring down the entire internet, as the load on cross-border channels would immediately increase when users connect to servers located abroad instead of their provider’s server. Roskomnadzor is currently measuring and observing how the YouTube slowdown affects the load on cross-border channels. If the load increases, the blockages may be relaxed, but if the loads are small, they might push for a 100% blockage.
C: Is the goal to reorient users to Russian networks, like RuTube and VKontakte (the most popular Russian network, controlled by the state)?
D: I think so. What we see is a change in the Kremlin’s strategy. Instead of a harsh blockade, like the one that awaited Instagram and Facebook, the task now is to worsen the quality of video to intensify user migration to Russian alternatives. This might work, as not everyone has access to VPN services, which have become significantly limited. Not everyone is ready to use them. If this continues for many months, it will certainly encourage users to gradually move to other platforms.
C: What are the consequences for bloggers moving to Russian YouTube alternatives?
D: The authorities will definitely moderate and censor the content. Some videos might be deleted entirely, or an entire channel might be taken down. By moving to Russian platforms, a blogger becomes entirely dependent on Roskomnadzor and its will, losing control over their content. This will be more severe than dealing with YouTube’s moderation team.
QUICK READS:
- The world’s first major A.I. law is in force and here is what it means for U.S. tech giants.
- Gen-Z protests brought down a government in Bangladesh. Here is how that unfolded.
- Instagram is still blocked in Turkey after the platform allegedly prevented people from publishing messages of condolence for assassinated Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
CODA RECOMMENDS:
The Wall Street Journal notes in this excellent piece that authoritarian states around the world are arbitrarily imprisoning foreign citizens, using them as bargaining chips to achieve geo-political goals, following the prisoner-swap last week in which over a dozen people jailed by the Kremlin were released and exchanged for Russian citizens.
This will be Indian wrestler Vinesh Phogat’s final Olympics, according to the athlete. Phogat, who won and then lost an Olympic gold medal over a tumultuous 24 hours, has survived poverty, sexual harassment by a member of Prime Minister Modi’s ruling party and police brutality. Phogat is heartbroken as she was declared 100 grams over her weight category after winning her medal, but her awe-inspiring story is one for the record books of feminist history.
The upcoming elections in Georgia this October will decide whether the country will continue down a path of Russian-style authoritarianism or not. Does the opposition stand a chance? Coda’s Nadia Beard reports on the Georgian Dream and a political nightmare for The New Yorker.
ART AND POWER
How does an artist respond to a world in turmoil over racial violence? Living through a week of race riots in the UK, I thought about Philip Guston, whose paintings of the Ku Klux Klan turned the lens on the banality of the oppressor, from fixating on the suffering of the oppressed. Watch a short documentary on his work here.
And while on the subject of power, I leave you with a delicious and intrigue-filled painting this week, called Cheat with the Ace of Clubs. This work by Georges de La Tour (inspired by Caravaggio) is a reminder that power is never static and cannot be hoarded forever. A sinister game is afoot, where the wealthy player on the right is about to be hustled by the shabbily-dressed cheat and his hidden aces on the left. Are the women in on the game? Is the wine poisoned? The tension is electric and if I had to re-title this work for the Instagram-age, it would be called, “The eyes, Chico, they never lie”.