https://www.history.com/news/josef-s...oto-retouching
It’s thought that Stalin’s obsession with photo doctoring constituted a mini industry in the USSR. Publishers were contacted by Stalin’s minions and told to eliminate the enemy du jour from upcoming photos—and they did. According to design historian David King, who uncovered thousands of doctored photos and their original versions, the work was not performed in one location or even through an official ministry.
Rather,” King writes, “photographic manipulation worked very much on an ad hoc basis. Orders were followed, quietly. A word in an editor’s ear or a discreet telephone conversation from a ‘higher authority’ was sufficient to eliminate all further reference—visual or literal—to a victim, no matter how famous she or he had been.”
If you look at the last weeks or so, and even before through last year, this is exactly what has been happening all across the top levels of Ukraine. But in a modern version of it
Last example Oleksiy Arestovych
The Instagram account of "Oleksiy" was blocked all around Ukraine, and he has been summoned to answers a very difficult "i'm not a traitor" conversation from which he will most likely not truly make it out, at least without leaving a very high price behind
So, How did Ukraine government controlled this kind of blocking across the entire country?
1. They asked Instagram to block the entire IP range for Ukraine on that single account
2. They asked all the ISPs in Ukraine to block that account if the url was requested
But, we see that if you go to that page now, you get a message back from Instagram. So that means, Instagram followed instructions from the Ukraine government to disallow access to that page
This is coming from a "freedom and democracy" country?
So, talk about something the government doesn't like, get removed from social media, face deathly charges, get the 'freedom and democracy lovers' companies in the west to comply and remove this person from all access to his followers. Cut him off so he can't speak openly anymore (government censorship out in the open), add it to the very well know kill list (we didn't do him any harm, some random person did, but we'll try to not find the person who killed him, just like we didn't try with the last 400 or so)
Fascism, authoritarian views, totalitarianism and current version of what "democracy, free speech and freedom" means sure share a lot of the same concepts