It's not ironic, it's well within the trend, if you're paying attention. How much time did Durov spend butting heads with Russian authorities? The media screamed their collective lungs out about ebil totalitarian Rashka stomping on freedoms. But he never got arrested and even trolled the courts - when they demanded encryption keys, he brought a ring with some random metal keys and said these were the only keys he could give.

In the same vein, have you heard about Dozhd (Дождь) TV channel? In ebil totalitarian Rashka, they've spent 12 years spewing libshit. Twelve years! Come SMO, they got kicked out and moved to le free liberal democratic Lithuania. A member of EU and NATO! Poor widdle guys bullied by ebil Rashka for being widdle and free! How long does Dozhd last there? Oh about four months.

It's all very much a trend, but admitting it would require one to be honest with oneself first and foremost

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago

Indeed, at this point the west has become objectively more repressive than Russia. There's far more censorship, far more people get arrested for social media posts, and now EU is going after communication platforms. Meanwhile, Chomsky pointed out recently that the U.S. censorship is now worse than USSR during Stalin years https://scheerpost.com/2022/07/30/video-is-u-s-censorship-worse-than-soviet-russia/