Reddit Banned In Russia Over Post About Growing Hallucinogenic Mushrooms
Reddit has been banned in Russia over a contentious post about easy ways of growing hallucinogenic mushrooms.
The Federal Drug Control Service decided to take action against the social media website taking issue with the content of a certain post titled, "Minimal and Reliable Methods for Growing Psilocybe [Mushrooms]."
While the ban seems a far-fetched move this is bordering-on normal for nations like Russia and China. Recently even the Indian government tried to ban an exhaustive list of porn websites in the country, but the prohibition lasted only for a few days as the move was faced with a lot of retaliation.
A report by Meduza reveals that the Russian censor authorities did try to get in touch with the Reddit admin to look into the page, but that they were not reachable. Here's the -- slightly sardonic -- public statement the censors gave out: "We assume that the website is simply understaffed during the summer holidays, but this is no excuse to risk [losing] its entire audience [in Russia]."
The user who put up the post has also responded to the ban, criticizing Russia's censorship laws and stating that he would not take down his post even after this debacle:
"Will I remove this post? No. I also think that Reddit administration needs to do nothing. This is important issue on freedom of speech, and only RKN want to violate it."
Vladimir Putin's regime has come under a lot of attack from the rest of the world over the power given to the censor board and especially for generously imposing bans, some of which impinge on the freedom of the citizens.
In other related news, U.S. Army Chief, Raymond Odierno revealed that Russia was America's most formidable enemy to CNN.
"They are more mature than some other of our potential adversaries, and I think they have some stated intents that concern me in terms of how the Cold War ended," Odierno said. "They have shown some significant capability in Ukraine to do operations that are fairly sophisticated, and so, for me, I think we should pay a lot of attention."
