Yandex picked the sides long ago, and now they are paying for being on the wrong side of the history. They aren't just complicit in censorship somehow, they are the censors themselves.
If you're willing to condemn them and their families to 15 years of prison for "honour", it's the least you could do.
My point is that it's extremely easy to condemn people online, but 99% of Westerners have never even had a contrarian position, let alone a contrarian position against an authoritarian government.
Canadians had a hint of it during the Trucker Protest if they donated and had their banking cancelled, but that's been about as close as the West has been to this sort of regime.
I think this is the meat of it. Plenty of westerners have some level of contrarian positions, but we don't face real resistance for it and thus fall into the trap of thinking it's easy for everyone else.
Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, it's drastic and heavily coercive, and it's arguably collateral damage. But it's not like these Russian programmers are having their apartments shelled. This is war through other means, and war is hell.
That law that you mention requires only to publish news from officially registered media. At that moment there were officially registered not-pro-Putin media that could be used as a source (for example, covering anti-government protests, trial on Navalny and so on), but Yandex preferred to tune the algorithm so that it chooses news from pro-Putin media for the homepage that is seen by millions of people.
Yandex chose to become a propaganda outlet. Some of the news that they re-publish from propaganda media are very low quality and, I think, even violate Yandex's own rules. If you understand Russian, read this headline for example: [1]. For those, who don't understand Russian, the headline contains the word "shit" while describing (with rejoice) how Lyubov Sobol was denied to take part in Moscow State Duma elections. There was no law requiring Yandex to accept such publications for their news aggregator, but they accepted it.
[1] https://newssearch.yandex.ru/news/search?text=%D0%B1%D0%BB%D...
Rukipedia even has a section on incidents suggesting both manual fiddling with the YN output and the government's stuffing of it: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Яндекс.Новости#Критика
As for the example you cite: if it was found just in the ‘news search’, then it's possibly not from a source ‘certified’ for appearing in the main news feed—from what I've read, it seems that the search includes many more sources than the feed, and is possibly not regulated by that law.
[1] https://yandex.ru/news/smi?name=%D0%9C%D0%BE%D1%81%D0%BA%D0%...
There are no 'good guys' in this war.
- Putin is a brutal dictator.
- America is pushing an amazing amount of propaganda in this war while simultaneously sending arms and funds to back a Saudi bombing campaign in Yemen targeting civilians.
- Ukraine has enlisted openly white supremacist neo-nazi's in their national guard to fight Russia in the east.
- Facebook even unbanned the Ukranian Azov Brigade [0] this week as long as they are fighting the Russians [1]
This is a war with no heroes and no winners, even though we have been taught to hate the 'others' to the point of targeting everyday Russian citizens, even those who oppose Putin's actions.
The truth is the first casualty in times of war. Propaganda works on all of us. The best thing we can do is realize that fact.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
[1] https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-ba...
If you are a male in Ukraine, you are essentially enlisted at this point. Heck, prisoners are being released to fight.
While they continue to fight for the sovereignty of a nation headed by a Jewish president I can see how they could be useful. Soldiers often aren't nice people. Most countries have at least a few hundred of these types of neo-Nazis.
Please share examples if you have them. It should be easy if, as you say “most countries have at least a few hundred.”
I’m struggling to understand how I am the minority here calling out what I always thought was a widely agreed principle on HN i.e. Nazis = bad.
Nazis are not the good guys and fighting alongside Nazis, even if convenient, is wrong. A few weeks ago this statement would have been so obvious as to be redundant on HN.
What if we win the war but lose our moral compass?
How do you explain to your kids that Nazis are bad except sometimes they are useful so not always bad?
[Citation needed]
Also, it seems we both agree that invading another country and shelling civilians is also wrong, whether it is Russia or the US or others waging wars of aggression.
It's conceivable that in some situations, it seems likely to result in the less-evil outcome.
Case in point, suppose you had a neo-nazi unit offering to take out a Russian artillery battery that was shelling civilians. Do you refuse to truck them to that vicinity because you find them repugnant?
Life is full of hard choices; doubly so in war.
I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi. I am surprised to find myself in the minority here but based on the downvotes it is clear that my position is not a popular one.
Not really. The example I chose was already hypothetical, and not necessarily apropos to the current situation in Ukraine. The additional context you provided doesn't change my basic point that there's a calculation to be made.
> I am firmly of the position that no Nazi is a good Nazi.
I think we may be discussing two different things. I wasn't talking about the moral standing of individual Nazis. I was talking about the moral calculation of temporarily collaborating with them to possibly achieve a better outcome than not collaborating with them.
Extending the earlier example, suppose there's just one neo-nazi, who's offering to go on a suicide mission that will take out 1000 Russian artillery batteries, saving 500,000 Ukranians. And nobody but you would know, so the neo-nazi's actions couldn't even potentially inspire others.
Would you entertain the possibility that that is a good trade-off? If yes, then you might be agreeing that there's a calculation to be performed. If no, then I'd wonder why you'd find it preferable to let 500,000 Ukranians die. (I'm not calling you a moral monster. I'm just trying to lay things out that shows there's an actual dilemma.)
Yes, I would would most certainly agree to support such an individual in the implausible scenario you just described.
However under those circumstances I would argue that the soldier is no longer a Nazi, but in fact he is now a Nazi defector - so not the same thing.
I am very glad to see how difficult it still is for folks on HN to support Nazis, even when they fight for Ukraine against the Russians.
I don’t support Nazis - never have - not even Ukrainian Nazis. I think it is hypocritical to do so and from your comment neither do you I believe.
But nazis exist in many countries, and are given legitimacy in many countries. In Ukraine they're paramilitary, in Russia they're a mercenary force, in Germany they sit in parliament (AFD), in US they have obvious affiliation with the political party that is in power half the time (and have strong legal protections for both their speech and guns).
All of that can be used as excuses to forcefully "denazify" a country, like Russia is doing now, but none of that are actually good reasons to invade those countries or deny any of those countries the right for independence, not even close.
It's not even worth mentioning.
Ps. Wagner group is > 6000.
Ps2. Every country has some dumbass neonazi's somewhere.
How many other countries (that the West defends) can claim to have openly employed neo-Nazis officially by the Government for as long as Ukraine?
I am old enough to remember when an entire Canadian trucker convoy protest movement was smeared as Nazis because 1 protester held 1 nazi flag on the 1st day of a 24 day protest before being asked to leave by other protesters.
Checks notes - That was only a couple weeks ago.
Now it seems that so many are willing to look the other way or even apologize for employing literal Nazis with guns simply because these Nazis are fighting for the ‘right’ side.
For the record, it is OK to support Ukraine’s right to defend itself, while also denouncing the decision to employ Nazis.
A few weeks ago, I would have expected nothing less from HN. Suddenly it seems the rules have changed?
Shaking my head, I don’t understand.
pretty sure i seen some heroes.
That said, my question was about how certain you were that at least some of the heroic acts you read or watched, were not some form of propaganda? Call me cynical but as soon as the conflict started I started investigating claims from both sides and I learned that a significant amount of what we heard early in this invasion turned out to be false propaganda.
Examples:
- Figher Ghost Ace turns out to be a myth https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/03/02/ukraines-figh...
- Israel TV Channel shows Star Wars Tie Fighter crash landed in Ukraine https://www.nytimespost.com/israeli-tv-channel-runs-live-foo...
- According to Reuters/MSNBC/US Officials - There is no evidence Russia attacked nuclear reactors in Ukraine. https://www.reuters.com/article/ukraine-crisis-usa-nuclear-e...
There's tons of evidence to show the horrors of what Russia is doing in Ukraine, and stuff like the ghost of Kyiv is just a morale boost for Ukrainians and is utterly irrelevant.
So yes, you should of course be sceptical, but no amount of honest and fair scepticism will paint Russia's invasion in a significantly better light.
TL;DR: The war didn't start last week. It has been ongoing since 2014 and involves horrible acts from both sides.
No, they don't average out and unfortunately we may never know what the 'truth' is here.
I won't pretend to have all the answers, but I will say after watching the video, the situation appears to be much more complicated than it is being depicted on western media.
Curiosity Stream: Why Russia is invading Ukraine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If61baWF4GE
Not that I can find. They seem to be focused on military strategy and geopolitics. Their other videos are about the reasons behind other modern military conflicts.