Let me be clear: I myself am not a big fan of "mock people and then pretend it's about teaching them". This is just being a scumbag.
But this is not meant to be that, or if it's used by someone in this capacity, it's a very poor laughing matter indeed.
It is good, however, as a conversation starter to bridge the gap. Meant not as mockery, but as an illustrative example to explain how we shouldn't be afraid of "scary words chemists say".
It's not meant to genuinely trick people into thinking that water is bad, that's obviously ridiculous even for the dumbest of people.
It's meant to be explained afterwards for those who got genuinely caught. Experiencing a fear of some dangerous chemical only to discover it's simply water is an illustrative example of how people misunderstand chemistry and chemical industry, and for some it might be eye-opening.
Only by the admin of your home instance, which is unlikely and normally comes after something very extreme (and can be mitigated by running your own instance, where you are in sole power over your account, so it cannot be banned globally)
But normally, you'll get banned by the community/certain other instance in very gruesome cases, but not your account.
On your question: I haven't lived in USSR (born in Russia already), but from what I could gather from relatives and older acquaintances, it was quite similar.
Generally good on workplace equality, quite some everyday/domestic sexism going both ways. One negative change in the workplace since the fall of USSR and rise in private enterprises is reluctancy of some bosses to select female employees, as they are feared to take maternity leave and be on the company's budget. I wouldn't say this happens everywhere, but it's common enough to be notable.
The positive shift in the domestic part started about 2010's, as new wave of feminism has been accepted by many in the Russian youth. Still, there are some issues on that front, particularly outside big cities.
In any case, the Soviet legacy clearly shows, and it sure has helped immensely, especially in the workplace.
One observation I made is that when women get to comprise a significant part of workforce in science, those things seem to be flattened out.
Working in the place and field (Russia, food technology) where women are about 50% of the workforce, I've never witnessed anything talked about here. Women are taken just as seriously on the position, they are promoted on par with men, they are in charge of many high-profile projects, and actively taking male and female students under scientific supervision. Any sort of workplace harassment will not just contribute to your potential termination, but will earn you very bad reputation - you'll be seen as a dangerous weirdo no one wants to deal with.
One other observation I made is that international scientists often come from the position of entitlement, which is also weird to me. Male scientists tend to flaunt their position any time they can, and many of the female scientists tend to sort of mimic this behavior, but it feels different, like if they try to claw the attention they were consistently denied.
For me, it is weird and unnatural. Where I live and work, some baseline respect towards your more experienced superiors, male or female, is to be expected, is taught since school, and doesn't require such performances. Since most school teachers are female, the role of woman as a potential superior to be respected is clearly defined and doesn't cause questions. Students are not afraid to contact their superiors, but do it respectfully and with full understanding they take valuable time of a high-profile scientist. Why do people have to constantly fight for attention and respect in many other cultures is beyond me.
I can't help but feel that the amount of people following the likes of Tate did not change much, they just got an opportunity to get more vocal, being less afraid of a pushback.
They are a now vocal minority, similar to how there was a rise in Neo-Nazi speech, for example.
For future reference: there are fields "URL" (the link) and "Thumbnail URL" (the picture). If you paste the image, the Thumbnail URL field disappears, and picture URL appears in URL field.
Cut it, and Thumbnail URL field appears again. Paste it into the Thumbnail URL field, and enter the link to whatever you want to be opened into the URL field again.
Voila - you have a link AND a custom picture. It's weird, it shouldn't work this way, but it works.
Let me be clear: I myself am not a big fan of "mock people and then pretend it's about teaching them". This is just being a scumbag.
But this is not meant to be that, or if it's used by someone in this capacity, it's a very poor laughing matter indeed.
It is good, however, as a conversation starter to bridge the gap. Meant not as mockery, but as an illustrative example to explain how we shouldn't be afraid of "scary words chemists say".