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Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

140 points by oivviopolite 5y ago

imgabe 5y ago
Russia is known to murder dissidents. For Spotify leaders to make a stand from the safety of the US and paint a target on the backs of their Russian employees would be the cowardly option. If the employees their want to choose on their own to take a stand that's up to them, but it's not a choice that Spotify should make for them.
- readthenotes1 5y ago
  Your point of view might have some merit to it if there a basis in fact. Do you dispute the author's claim "On Wednesday night [March 2], Spotify announced that it is closing its Moscow office"?
  - imgabe 5y ago
    Do you think Putin is going to care that Spotify closed the office if they're defying his censorship laws? The (former) employees are still going to be in Russia. They're still going to be associated with Spotify and subject to arrest. This not a normal legal system where you can prove to someone in a court that you no longer worked at the company and they're going to consider the merits of your argument. Putin will want to punish someone for Spotify defying his censorship order and he'll reach out and punish whoever is available to make an example, regardless of whether they are responsible.
    - rendall 5y ago
      It's your contention that Spotify's decisions have been driven by concern for their ex-employees in Moscow?
haydar_ai 5y ago
> Here we may take a break to consider the fact that Russian is not only the language of one country, Russia. It is also the native language for millions of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Therefore it is far from obvious that a Russian-language podcast initiative should be based in Russia. The fact that some people speak Russian in Ukraine/Belarus does not mean that it’s better to do it there. This is like trying to make an English-language podcast initiative in Republic of Ireland just because English is also the language spoken there. Furthermore, as far as I know Ukraine try to promote Ukrainian language more to distant further from Russia. Hence I don’t think it’s that crazy that they opt for Russia-based office rather than elsewhere, also the fact that there are more Russians meaning that they have bigger target audience.
- omnicognate 5y ago
  Full quote, emphasis mine: > Here we may take a break to consider the fact that Russian is not only the language of one country, Russia. It is also the native language for millions of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Therefore it is far from obvious that a Russian-language podcast initiative should be based in Russia. For an organization serious about defending free speech, it might have made more sense to locate the office in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv: a predominantly Russian-speaking city, which in recent years has also served as a refuge for many dissidents from Russia and Belarus. Also, earlier: > Yet, a better alternative would have been to keep operating, while declaring openly that their media machine will be available for the dissidents in Russia To read an article like that and and come away thinking the argument being made is "Russian is spoken in Ukraine and Belarus therefore it should be based there" is... well, unlikely tbh.
- reikonomusha 5y ago
  I wanted to add a bit of footnote commentary on how I understand Russian to be spoken in Ukraine. Millions of native Ukrainians, especially in the eastern side of Ukraine, exclusively speak Russian, and in fact speak it much better than Ukrainian. [1] (Almost all Ukrainians understand Ukrainian perfectly fine, and even study it in school, but a large contingent don't speak it as their mother tongue.) It's much, much more than just "some Ukrainians", and in fact, it's part of what characteristically and culturally distinguishes some eastern and western/rural and urban regions of Ukraine. [2] Going into anecdotal territory: This was surprising to me. I hosted a family native to Kharkiv and discussed this topic. I'd think speaking Ukrainian would be a part of one's heritage worth preserving, so it was surprising that speaking Ukrainian wasn't a fluent affair for them, and they also didn't have much interest in promoting the language. Their remarks, extremely simplified, were basically that Russian is so broadly understood that it is just efficient to use, especially because of the internet. They don't want the Ukrainian language to die, but they also don't find it as a practical "daily driver". Their children know Ukrainian from having to learn it in school (but don't really speak it), and their grand-children—who moved to the USA—don't know it at all and only speak Russian. I'm less familiar with Belarus, but it was an almost identical sentiment about Russian and Belarusian for a Minsk-native family that hosted me. [1] "Russian is the native language of 29.6% of Ukraine's population [...]." "According to a survey conducted in 2006-2007 by Gallup, 83% of the respondents preferred to conduct the Gallup interview in Russian." "For the preferred language of work, an equal amount chose either Ukrainian or Russian (37%) and 21% communicated bilingually. The study polled 10,071 individuals and held a 1% margin of error." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png/1280px-UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Uk...
jazzyjackson 5y ago
> Spotify had opened a representative office in Moscow. [...] Why? Seemingly just to get a bit closer to the treasuries of the region’s greatest kleptocrats. or maybe it's easier to hire talent in Moscow (a metropolis of 17M) than Kyiv (3M), sheesh
- tgv 5y ago
  Why write such a dismissive comment when that’s not the point at all?
  - jazzyjackson 5y ago
    It captured the tone of the article to me, reading in too deep to motivations of a publically traded company where there might be easily explained, boring, financial incentives. Don't know why anyone expects a corporation to take the moral high ground.
    - atoav 5y ago
      > Don't know why anyone expects a corporation to take the moral high ground. Because corporations belong to the biggest and most powerful entities on the planet and not holding them to high moral standards seems to many of us like a sure way into a dystopian future. If a corporation is viewed as some sort of mega-organism that lives long, evolves, changes it's environment, etc. who else then humans shall try to keep these from turning the world into a bad place? Even staunch believers into the invisible hand of the market think that it is individuals who will guide the corporations into behaving in such ways that they benefit all of us.
    - tgv 5y ago
      Viewing a company as only having purely financial interests is very limited, IMO. Hey, let's sell hypermodern weaponry to the Russians and the Chinese. It'll make us a quick buck! But you may well be right that that's all Spotify has, given their predatory business model. What's wrong pointing that out? Why would you even criticize that, given that it's that site's financial incentive?
RyanShook 5y ago
Tech companies face a tough choice on censorship but the timing of this one is especially bad.
konart 5y ago
What does opening representative office has to do with their stand? Apple and Google, Meta also opened representative offices back in February. Did in stop them from doing business here (at least part of it, likely temporarily)? No. >At the same time, both Instagram and Youtube have been blocked in Russia. But not Spotify. That's not true. Twitter and Facebook are blocked (even though they also "submitted to the Kremlin"). Instagram and Youtube are not.
kaczordon 5y ago
This doesn’t seem any more cowardly than YouTube’s decision to ban RT. Hard to claim to be on the side of free speech when American tech companies are censoring right and left.
- TheCoelacanth 5y ago
  Declining to participate in a propaganda campaign supporting an illegal and unprovoked war is not censorship.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- trhway 5y ago
  RT propaganda is an organic part, a psyop, of the genocidal war in Ukraine. There is nothing about free speech in refusal to support genocidal war. If anything it is a duty of any normal person (and any company consisting of such people).
  - CheezeIt 5y ago
    This isn’t a “genocidal” war.
    - trhway 5y ago
      Civilians are intentionally killed and forced from their land because they are of different ethnicity. That is called genocide and ethnic cleansing. Putin has been very clear in his speeches that "Ukrainian question" is the main issue here. Ukrainians being of different ethnicity want their own culture, state, etc. while Putin refuses their right for that on the basis of his claim that their ethnicity doesn't exist.
      - just-ok 5y ago
        > because they are of a different ethnicity [citation needed]
aliswe 5y ago
So now we are beyond "praise a company if they shut their business in Russia", and have arrived at "ostracize them if they don't", even though (afaik) they haven't been ordered to censor their content or otherwise be a mouthpiece for them? Is there an extreme to this or is it all going to pass public judgement?
- buro9 5y ago
  I run over 300 forums. These are based in Europe, America, Australia. They are for varied interests from cycling to cars to telescopes. There are threads about the war on every forum. And individuals on every forum are actively cancelling subscriptions and tracking boycotts. It's not just going to pass public judgement, it has enthusiastic and vocal support of most of the public. This anecdata is based on a monthly user base of 250k. Not significant, but also not insignificant.
  - haveyoubeen 5y ago
sreejithr 5y ago
Wouldn't shutting down western tech companies in Russia lead to Russians being limited to just state propaganda?
- npteljes 5y ago
  I think obeying their censorship rules leads to the same.
- type0 5y ago
  It is considerably worse because many people actually do not realize the extent of the censorship there, and the end result is that they are only fed falsehoods through the media.
roenxi 5y ago
There is nothing bold about halting trade with Russia right now; as far as can be told there is a great deal of social and political support for anyone making such a choice. To be honest, companies making emotional decisions is more concerning to me. It is reasonable and to be encouraged if businesses want to be a moral-less dumb pipe. Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a just war or propaganda & can achieve nothing against the Russian military. If they just stick to following the law that is fine. If something is required of them then the military leadership can ask them to do it.
- trhway 5y ago
  > Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a just war or propaganda how hard it is? when only one of the 2 sides bombs civilians and causes millions of people to run away (as of now 1.4M, mostly women/children/elderly, have already crossed the border while many more is still running toward the border) just for the reason of ethnical difference, and thus committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Edit in response to comment below: >No one had ever mentioned Ukrainians being "discriminated" by Russians before the war well, sounds like you are completely unfamiliar with history there. I'm btw a Russian, half-Ukrainian, and your lecture here on that national issue is just fully incorrect. >This is a desperate attempt by some Ukrainians to paint a picture of Russia as being equivalent to Nazi Germany, playing the same Hitler card that Putin did to start the war. that is just Russian propaganda, and completely unsupported by any facts. >They are doing that to try to make the West feel morally obliged to act even if that means war spreads to the whole of Europe and potentially, turns into a nuclear war. that again is Russian propaganda, trying to scare the West by nukes. >Even though there is a lot of suffering happening in Ukraine the suffering has ethnical reason and thus it is genocide > and Russia is indeed bombing cities in the fight with the Ukrainian army that it Russian propaganda. Russia is bombing cities without any connection to any fight. Just look at all those aftermath videos - there is no Ukrainian tanks/etc among the destroyed buildings/etc. For example, today they shot down a pilot bombing a city and interviewed him - "They told us the city was empty", and of course he lied as it was a guy well known for his Syrian civilian bombings. He didn't even try to say anything about any military targets. On the other side there are tons of videos of Russian armor burnt in the cities. Why did they come into cities endangering the civilians?
netcan 5y ago
IDK... I think the right thing to do isn't entirely obvious. >> a better alternative would have been to keep operating, while declaring openly that their media machine will be available for the dissidents in Russia >> At an absolute minimum, Spotify could have let its Russian users face recommended playlists on the theme of “peace”. I remember when Google initially came into conflict with China's censorship. The government wanted them to conform to the chinese way, censoring bad content on their own initiative without receiving an explicit list. A particular bugbear was returning search results that link to sites blocked by the great firewall. ATT, Google's "don't be evil" was still standing as a slogan. Early 2000s internet naivety still had some punch. China's attempt to censor the internet seemed foolish and doomed. Anyway Google eventually tucked tail and learned that they cannot conflict with the CCP and come away with a win. A decade later and we're knee deep in a clunky, controversial and blunt anti-misinformation vs free speech balance. Try that in a war zone. Realistically, I think companies have two choices... more or less. They can stay or they can go. Multinational companies are not emissaries of anything but economics. We shouldn't expect them to be independent participants in international conflicts. Luckily, Spotify's podcast strategy has not succeeded yet. Most podcasts are still distributed as podcasts, via RSS. They're one of the most free forms of online media. Spotify is trying to build a walled garden around this last piece of wilderness. The best thing spotify can do to enable free media in wartime is to just go away.
Barrin92 5y ago
>Then it would maybe just be a matter of time until they also closed down access to Spotify in Russia. But it would at least be a statement, saving the face of Daniel Ek. Okay, so the author's idea of bravery is to pull a meaningless PR stunt that does nothing for Russians but instead saves the face of the company's CEO in the eyes of anglosphere online bloggers? For once an actual instance of behavior where the overused 'virtue signaling' phrase makes sense. The smart move for companies is to comply with these laws to a superficial extent while silently keeping as much dissident content online as possible and staying off the radar of regulators.
- webmobdev 5y ago
  This is more of an American thing - the slow and subtle ceding of autonomy and power to corporates, with the expectations that they should behave like country states and be political. It's a very dangerous idea that Americans are being slowly brainwashed into, to repose more and more faith on corporates than their own democracy! This is the kind of thinking that lead to imperialism, with the Dutch East India Company being the poster boy of the idea as the world's richest corporate, with one of the largest private army in the world conquering and even ruling colonies. The idea that foreign companies shouldn't submit to the laws, rule and regulations of another country is a retrograde colonial idea that reeks of both racism and greed. CEOs are not elected representatives nor seasoned politicians.
  - smitty1e 5y ago
    > The idea that foreign companies shouldn't submit to the laws, rule and regulations of another country is a retrograde colonial idea that reeks of both racism and greed. More to the point, one cannot dictate the actions of another under pressure. It's one thing to have a theoretical model of what others _should_ do when confronted with aggression. It's quite another to stay on the theoretical course when confronted by state actors backed by guns. Another dimension is those affected by our decisions. One might go down in a blaze of Leeroy Jenkins[1] glory if it's only oneself in the blaze. If ones actions put others in harm's way, things tend to get far more cautious. SUMMARY: it gets hard to be too harsh in these situations. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins
xanaxagoras 5y ago
As an R. Kelly fan, this does not surprise me all. Once censorship begins it’s easier and easier to follow that well worn path. A lot of people like to mock the idea of cancel culture and pretend that it doesn’t exist - you know, the plainly disingenuous types who will say “they are a private company” out of one side of their mouth while demanding gay wedding cakes get baked out of the other. And sure there are ostensible shallow moral victories to be enjoyed by shutting your enemies up. But this impulse to control what’s said and what’s heard in the public sphere sure seems more dangerous when the stakes are higher, and increasingly it isn’t just normalized, but encouraged.
- rswail 5y ago
  > As an R. Kelly fan... You mean Robert Sylvester Kelly, who was found guilty of one count of racketeering and 7 counts of violation of the Mann Act after a jury trial? The same R Kelly that illegally married 15 year old Aaliyah in 1994? The same R Kelly that is now facing further federal charges of child pornography and obstruction? How is he or his cases in any way relevant to censorship or "cancel culture"? The guy is a convicted child molester and has been a sleazy person for 25+ years.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    Seems pretty relevant for the reasons you just stated. Telling someone you can't like music from a child molester or that it has retroactively been deemed to not be good music is cancel card culture at its heart, the bread-and-butter most defensible part. Preventing people from procuring said music is obviously censorship.
  - xanaxagoras 5y ago
    His sex crimes are unrelated to censorship or cancel culture. I agree with your non-controversial position that child abuse is abhorrent. I hope he is killed in prison. But I love his music, I still listen to it, and I'm not sorry for that. The twitter mob against him that harassed Spotify into removing his music from their service is the literal epitome of cancel culture. 1. Take a consensus position (raping children is bad) 2. Repeat it over and over again, loudly, to make your actual point, which is that you are a good person. Not just because you don't rape children, but also because you are bravely amplifying this view that basically everyone holds 3. Make a public demand of a company that is tangentially related to the subject somehow, which if satisfied, will do exactly nothing to help or fix the problem 4. Form a mob of those interested in signalling their own virtue, who may or may not care about the motivating issue, to strong arm said company into compliance 5. Celebrate your hollow victory and briefly feel like you did something important (you did not)
TT-392 5y ago
At least they are staying consistent I guess. Instead of just doing business in / cater to the government of messed up regimes and only stop doing that when they start a war in your backyard.
gurumeditations 5y ago
According to HN commenters, opposing Russia in any way is wrong because censorship, slippery slope, dissidents, etc. take your pick of why their horse is higher than yours.
- haveyoubeen 5y ago
  Small horse syndrome? You sound unreasonably angry at HN commenters who have simply put their critical thinking hats to use
  - wewtyflakes 5y ago
    I think the poster is at a reasonable level of angry. What makes you feel otherwise?
- nxm 5y ago
  I don’t need nor want corporations to do decide what is good vs. evil in this world. I can make an informed decision on my own. Censorship takes this agency away from me.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Gatsky 5y ago
A corporation is an amoral construct by design.
tomohawk 5y ago
This seems like a minor quibble compared to Biden not just refusing to stop buying oil from Russia, but encouraging companies like Shell to do so. Or only sanctioning 25% of the Russian banks, but making it sound like they're sanctioning all of them. Or not sanctioning Belarus.
ComradePhil 5y ago
These companies banning Russia is AMAZING opportunity for the Russian government. If Russia is run by smart people, they must be delighted by it. All they have to do is wait for these companies to block them... and then use the opportunity to block it from their side never letting them come back to the market... and let the alternatives grow in the local market. That way, they get to keep the population from being dependent on foreign infrastructure and they don't even have to take responsibility for blocking them themselves.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  That worked well for North Korea.
  - ComradePhil 5y ago
    Russia and NK are not comparable economies. NK has an estimated GDP of 27 billion and a population of 27 million, Russia has a GDP of 1.5 trillon and a population of 145 million (per capita GDP for Russia is an order of magnitude higher than that of NK and very similar to that of China). Russia is perfectly placed to be able to pull that off while NK is not.
    - kbelder 5y ago
      >Russia and NK are not comparable economies. Just wait. While you wait, compare the economies of North and South Korea.
      - ComradePhil 5y ago
        You can sanction and isolate smaller economies. Larger independent economies will not only be fine if you sanction them, they grow stronger. North Korea is being punished for not wanting to be invaded when America wanted to invade it. South Koreans got invaded and got all the multi-nationals to exploit them... as a result, they have an economy but they spend all their money into looking like their invaders (highest cosmetic surgeries in the world, to make their facial features look western) and kill themselves because they can never become like their invaders (highest suicide rate). If NK is around in its current state when the American empire falls, SK will look to NK to connect back to their roots. I truly hope, for the sake of South Koreans, North Korea manages to live on.
stevespang 5y ago
bagavi 5y ago
Imagine USA being bycotted by all companies for attacking Afghanistan or Iraq. This would unite the US citizens no matter what thier president did. Everyone, think twice before imposing crippling sanctions on a country with nukes.
- type0 5y ago
  > Everyone, think twice before imposing crippling sanctions on a country with nukes. Just imagined. Imagine all the people... And what do nukes have to do with this exactly?
davidjytang 5y ago
Neither agreeing or disagreeing with Spotify. But what Spotify is doing is anything but cowardly. It takes more to go against the flow where so many is doing one and you are doing the opposite.
Handytinge 5y ago
"I think it's fine for them to be on platforms as long as they share my views and say the things I want them to". Man, what a crybaby. Corporations making meaningless gestures for empty "support" is not a positive, it's virtue signally to sell you more widgets. It's a more subtle version of ads. Why are you asking for more of it?

140 points by oivviopolite 5y ago

Russia is known to murder dissidents. For Spotify leaders to make a stand from the safety of the US and paint a target on the backs of their Russian employees would be the cowardly option. If the employees their want to choose on their own to take a stand that's up to them, but it's not a choice that Spotify should make for them.

readthenotes1 5y ago
Your point of view might have some merit to it if there a basis in fact. Do you dispute the author's claim "On Wednesday night [March 2], Spotify announced that it is closing its Moscow office"?
- imgabe 5y ago
  Do you think Putin is going to care that Spotify closed the office if they're defying his censorship laws? The (former) employees are still going to be in Russia. They're still going to be associated with Spotify and subject to arrest. This not a normal legal system where you can prove to someone in a court that you no longer worked at the company and they're going to consider the merits of your argument. Putin will want to punish someone for Spotify defying his censorship order and he'll reach out and punish whoever is available to make an example, regardless of whether they are responsible.
  - rendall 5y ago
    It's your contention that Spotify's decisions have been driven by concern for their ex-employees in Moscow?

haydar_ai 5y ago

> Here we may take a break to consider the fact that Russian is not only the language of one country, Russia. It is also the native language for millions of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Therefore it is far from obvious that a Russian-language podcast initiative should be based in Russia. The fact that some people speak Russian in Ukraine/Belarus does not mean that it’s better to do it there. This is like trying to make an English-language podcast initiative in Republic of Ireland just because English is also the language spoken there. Furthermore, as far as I know Ukraine try to promote Ukrainian language more to distant further from Russia. Hence I don’t think it’s that crazy that they opt for Russia-based office rather than elsewhere, also the fact that there are more Russians meaning that they have bigger target audience.

omnicognate 5y ago
Full quote, emphasis mine: > Here we may take a break to consider the fact that Russian is not only the language of one country, Russia. It is also the native language for millions of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Therefore it is far from obvious that a Russian-language podcast initiative should be based in Russia. For an organization serious about defending free speech, it might have made more sense to locate the office in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv: a predominantly Russian-speaking city, which in recent years has also served as a refuge for many dissidents from Russia and Belarus. Also, earlier: > Yet, a better alternative would have been to keep operating, while declaring openly that their media machine will be available for the dissidents in Russia To read an article like that and and come away thinking the argument being made is "Russian is spoken in Ukraine and Belarus therefore it should be based there" is... well, unlikely tbh.
reikonomusha 5y ago
I wanted to add a bit of footnote commentary on how I understand Russian to be spoken in Ukraine. Millions of native Ukrainians, especially in the eastern side of Ukraine, exclusively speak Russian, and in fact speak it much better than Ukrainian. [1] (Almost all Ukrainians understand Ukrainian perfectly fine, and even study it in school, but a large contingent don't speak it as their mother tongue.) It's much, much more than just "some Ukrainians", and in fact, it's part of what characteristically and culturally distinguishes some eastern and western/rural and urban regions of Ukraine. [2] Going into anecdotal territory: This was surprising to me. I hosted a family native to Kharkiv and discussed this topic. I'd think speaking Ukrainian would be a part of one's heritage worth preserving, so it was surprising that speaking Ukrainian wasn't a fluent affair for them, and they also didn't have much interest in promoting the language. Their remarks, extremely simplified, were basically that Russian is so broadly understood that it is just efficient to use, especially because of the internet. They don't want the Ukrainian language to die, but they also don't find it as a practical "daily driver". Their children know Ukrainian from having to learn it in school (but don't really speak it), and their grand-children—who moved to the USA—don't know it at all and only speak Russian. I'm less familiar with Belarus, but it was an almost identical sentiment about Russian and Belarusian for a Minsk-native family that hosted me. [1] "Russian is the native language of 29.6% of Ukraine's population [...]." "According to a survey conducted in 2006-2007 by Gallup, 83% of the respondents preferred to conduct the Gallup interview in Russian." "For the preferred language of work, an equal amount chose either Ukrainian or Russian (37%) and 21% communicated bilingually. The study polled 10,071 individuals and held a 1% margin of error." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine [2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png/1280px-UkraineNativeLanguagesCensus2001detailed-en.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Uk...

jazzyjackson 5y ago

> Spotify had opened a representative office in Moscow. [...] Why? Seemingly just to get a bit closer to the treasuries of the region’s greatest kleptocrats. or maybe it's easier to hire talent in Moscow (a metropolis of 17M) than Kyiv (3M), sheesh

tgv 5y ago
Why write such a dismissive comment when that’s not the point at all?
- jazzyjackson 5y ago
  It captured the tone of the article to me, reading in too deep to motivations of a publically traded company where there might be easily explained, boring, financial incentives. Don't know why anyone expects a corporation to take the moral high ground.
  - atoav 5y ago
    > Don't know why anyone expects a corporation to take the moral high ground. Because corporations belong to the biggest and most powerful entities on the planet and not holding them to high moral standards seems to many of us like a sure way into a dystopian future. If a corporation is viewed as some sort of mega-organism that lives long, evolves, changes it's environment, etc. who else then humans shall try to keep these from turning the world into a bad place? Even staunch believers into the invisible hand of the market think that it is individuals who will guide the corporations into behaving in such ways that they benefit all of us.
  - tgv 5y ago
    Viewing a company as only having purely financial interests is very limited, IMO. Hey, let's sell hypermodern weaponry to the Russians and the Chinese. It'll make us a quick buck! But you may well be right that that's all Spotify has, given their predatory business model. What's wrong pointing that out? Why would you even criticize that, given that it's that site's financial incentive?

RyanShook 5y ago

Tech companies face a tough choice on censorship but the timing of this one is especially bad.

konart 5y ago

What does opening representative office has to do with their stand? Apple and Google, Meta also opened representative offices back in February. Did in stop them from doing business here (at least part of it, likely temporarily)? No. >At the same time, both Instagram and Youtube have been blocked in Russia. But not Spotify. That's not true. Twitter and Facebook are blocked (even though they also "submitted to the Kremlin"). Instagram and Youtube are not.

kaczordon 5y ago

This doesn’t seem any more cowardly than YouTube’s decision to ban RT. Hard to claim to be on the side of free speech when American tech companies are censoring right and left.

TheCoelacanth 5y ago
Declining to participate in a propaganda campaign supporting an illegal and unprovoked war is not censorship.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
trhway 5y ago
RT propaganda is an organic part, a psyop, of the genocidal war in Ukraine. There is nothing about free speech in refusal to support genocidal war. If anything it is a duty of any normal person (and any company consisting of such people).
- CheezeIt 5y ago
  This isn’t a “genocidal” war.
  - trhway 5y ago
    Civilians are intentionally killed and forced from their land because they are of different ethnicity. That is called genocide and ethnic cleansing. Putin has been very clear in his speeches that "Ukrainian question" is the main issue here. Ukrainians being of different ethnicity want their own culture, state, etc. while Putin refuses their right for that on the basis of his claim that their ethnicity doesn't exist.
    - just-ok 5y ago
      > because they are of a different ethnicity [citation needed]

aliswe 5y ago

So now we are beyond "praise a company if they shut their business in Russia", and have arrived at "ostracize them if they don't", even though (afaik) they haven't been ordered to censor their content or otherwise be a mouthpiece for them? Is there an extreme to this or is it all going to pass public judgement?

buro9 5y ago
I run over 300 forums. These are based in Europe, America, Australia. They are for varied interests from cycling to cars to telescopes. There are threads about the war on every forum. And individuals on every forum are actively cancelling subscriptions and tracking boycotts. It's not just going to pass public judgement, it has enthusiastic and vocal support of most of the public. This anecdata is based on a monthly user base of 250k. Not significant, but also not insignificant.
- haveyoubeen 5y ago

sreejithr 5y ago

Wouldn't shutting down western tech companies in Russia lead to Russians being limited to just state propaganda?

npteljes 5y ago
I think obeying their censorship rules leads to the same.
type0 5y ago
It is considerably worse because many people actually do not realize the extent of the censorship there, and the end result is that they are only fed falsehoods through the media.

roenxi 5y ago

There is nothing bold about halting trade with Russia right now; as far as can be told there is a great deal of social and political support for anyone making such a choice. To be honest, companies making emotional decisions is more concerning to me. It is reasonable and to be encouraged if businesses want to be a moral-less dumb pipe. Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a just war or propaganda & can achieve nothing against the Russian military. If they just stick to following the law that is fine. If something is required of them then the military leadership can ask them to do it.

trhway 5y ago
> Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a just war or propaganda how hard it is? when only one of the 2 sides bombs civilians and causes millions of people to run away (as of now 1.4M, mostly women/children/elderly, have already crossed the border while many more is still running toward the border) just for the reason of ethnical difference, and thus committing genocide and ethnic cleansing. Edit in response to comment below: >No one had ever mentioned Ukrainians being "discriminated" by Russians before the war well, sounds like you are completely unfamiliar with history there. I'm btw a Russian, half-Ukrainian, and your lecture here on that national issue is just fully incorrect. >This is a desperate attempt by some Ukrainians to paint a picture of Russia as being equivalent to Nazi Germany, playing the same Hitler card that Putin did to start the war. that is just Russian propaganda, and completely unsupported by any facts. >They are doing that to try to make the West feel morally obliged to act even if that means war spreads to the whole of Europe and potentially, turns into a nuclear war. that again is Russian propaganda, trying to scare the West by nukes. >Even though there is a lot of suffering happening in Ukraine the suffering has ethnical reason and thus it is genocide > and Russia is indeed bombing cities in the fight with the Ukrainian army that it Russian propaganda. Russia is bombing cities without any connection to any fight. Just look at all those aftermath videos - there is no Ukrainian tanks/etc among the destroyed buildings/etc. For example, today they shot down a pilot bombing a city and interviewed him - "They told us the city was empty", and of course he lied as it was a guy well known for his Syrian civilian bombings. He didn't even try to say anything about any military targets. On the other side there are tons of videos of Russian armor burnt in the cities. Why did they come into cities endangering the civilians?

netcan 5y ago

IDK... I think the right thing to do isn't entirely obvious. >> a better alternative would have been to keep operating, while declaring openly that their media machine will be available for the dissidents in Russia >> At an absolute minimum, Spotify could have let its Russian users face recommended playlists on the theme of “peace”. I remember when Google initially came into conflict with China's censorship. The government wanted them to conform to the chinese way, censoring bad content on their own initiative without receiving an explicit list. A particular bugbear was returning search results that link to sites blocked by the great firewall. ATT, Google's "don't be evil" was still standing as a slogan. Early 2000s internet naivety still had some punch. China's attempt to censor the internet seemed foolish and doomed. Anyway Google eventually tucked tail and learned that they cannot conflict with the CCP and come away with a win. A decade later and we're knee deep in a clunky, controversial and blunt anti-misinformation vs free speech balance. Try that in a war zone. Realistically, I think companies have two choices... more or less. They can stay or they can go. Multinational companies are not emissaries of anything but economics. We shouldn't expect them to be independent participants in international conflicts. Luckily, Spotify's podcast strategy has not succeeded yet. Most podcasts are still distributed as podcasts, via RSS. They're one of the most free forms of online media. Spotify is trying to build a walled garden around this last piece of wilderness. The best thing spotify can do to enable free media in wartime is to just go away.

Barrin92 5y ago

>Then it would maybe just be a matter of time until they also closed down access to Spotify in Russia. But it would at least be a statement, saving the face of Daniel Ek. Okay, so the author's idea of bravery is to pull a meaningless PR stunt that does nothing for Russians but instead saves the face of the company's CEO in the eyes of anglosphere online bloggers? For once an actual instance of behavior where the overused 'virtue signaling' phrase makes sense. The smart move for companies is to comply with these laws to a superficial extent while silently keeping as much dissident content online as possible and staying off the radar of regulators.

webmobdev 5y ago
This is more of an American thing - the slow and subtle ceding of autonomy and power to corporates, with the expectations that they should behave like country states and be political. It's a very dangerous idea that Americans are being slowly brainwashed into, to repose more and more faith on corporates than their own democracy! This is the kind of thinking that lead to imperialism, with the Dutch East India Company being the poster boy of the idea as the world's richest corporate, with one of the largest private army in the world conquering and even ruling colonies. The idea that foreign companies shouldn't submit to the laws, rule and regulations of another country is a retrograde colonial idea that reeks of both racism and greed. CEOs are not elected representatives nor seasoned politicians.
- smitty1e 5y ago
  > The idea that foreign companies shouldn't submit to the laws, rule and regulations of another country is a retrograde colonial idea that reeks of both racism and greed. More to the point, one cannot dictate the actions of another under pressure. It's one thing to have a theoretical model of what others _should_ do when confronted with aggression. It's quite another to stay on the theoretical course when confronted by state actors backed by guns. Another dimension is those affected by our decisions. One might go down in a blaze of Leeroy Jenkins[1] glory if it's only oneself in the blaze. If ones actions put others in harm's way, things tend to get far more cautious. SUMMARY: it gets hard to be too harsh in these situations. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leeroy_Jenkins

xanaxagoras 5y ago

As an R. Kelly fan, this does not surprise me all. Once censorship begins it’s easier and easier to follow that well worn path. A lot of people like to mock the idea of cancel culture and pretend that it doesn’t exist - you know, the plainly disingenuous types who will say “they are a private company” out of one side of their mouth while demanding gay wedding cakes get baked out of the other. And sure there are ostensible shallow moral victories to be enjoyed by shutting your enemies up. But this impulse to control what’s said and what’s heard in the public sphere sure seems more dangerous when the stakes are higher, and increasingly it isn’t just normalized, but encouraged.

rswail 5y ago
> As an R. Kelly fan... You mean Robert Sylvester Kelly, who was found guilty of one count of racketeering and 7 counts of violation of the Mann Act after a jury trial? The same R Kelly that illegally married 15 year old Aaliyah in 1994? The same R Kelly that is now facing further federal charges of child pornography and obstruction? How is he or his cases in any way relevant to censorship or "cancel culture"? The guy is a convicted child molester and has been a sleazy person for 25+ years.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  Seems pretty relevant for the reasons you just stated. Telling someone you can't like music from a child molester or that it has retroactively been deemed to not be good music is cancel card culture at its heart, the bread-and-butter most defensible part. Preventing people from procuring said music is obviously censorship.
- xanaxagoras 5y ago
  His sex crimes are unrelated to censorship or cancel culture. I agree with your non-controversial position that child abuse is abhorrent. I hope he is killed in prison. But I love his music, I still listen to it, and I'm not sorry for that. The twitter mob against him that harassed Spotify into removing his music from their service is the literal epitome of cancel culture. 1. Take a consensus position (raping children is bad) 2. Repeat it over and over again, loudly, to make your actual point, which is that you are a good person. Not just because you don't rape children, but also because you are bravely amplifying this view that basically everyone holds 3. Make a public demand of a company that is tangentially related to the subject somehow, which if satisfied, will do exactly nothing to help or fix the problem 4. Form a mob of those interested in signalling their own virtue, who may or may not care about the motivating issue, to strong arm said company into compliance 5. Celebrate your hollow victory and briefly feel like you did something important (you did not)

TT-392 5y ago

At least they are staying consistent I guess. Instead of just doing business in / cater to the government of messed up regimes and only stop doing that when they start a war in your backyard.

gurumeditations 5y ago

According to HN commenters, opposing Russia in any way is wrong because censorship, slippery slope, dissidents, etc. take your pick of why their horse is higher than yours.

haveyoubeen 5y ago
Small horse syndrome? You sound unreasonably angry at HN commenters who have simply put their critical thinking hats to use
- wewtyflakes 5y ago
  I think the poster is at a reasonable level of angry. What makes you feel otherwise?
nxm 5y ago
I don’t need nor want corporations to do decide what is good vs. evil in this world. I can make an informed decision on my own. Censorship takes this agency away from me.

deleted 5y ago

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Gatsky 5y ago

A corporation is an amoral construct by design.

tomohawk 5y ago

This seems like a minor quibble compared to Biden not just refusing to stop buying oil from Russia, but encouraging companies like Shell to do so. Or only sanctioning 25% of the Russian banks, but making it sound like they're sanctioning all of them. Or not sanctioning Belarus.

ComradePhil 5y ago

These companies banning Russia is AMAZING opportunity for the Russian government. If Russia is run by smart people, they must be delighted by it. All they have to do is wait for these companies to block them... and then use the opportunity to block it from their side never letting them come back to the market... and let the alternatives grow in the local market. That way, they get to keep the population from being dependent on foreign infrastructure and they don't even have to take responsibility for blocking them themselves.

lostmsu 5y ago
That worked well for North Korea.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  Russia and NK are not comparable economies. NK has an estimated GDP of 27 billion and a population of 27 million, Russia has a GDP of 1.5 trillon and a population of 145 million (per capita GDP for Russia is an order of magnitude higher than that of NK and very similar to that of China). Russia is perfectly placed to be able to pull that off while NK is not.
  - kbelder 5y ago
    >Russia and NK are not comparable economies. Just wait. While you wait, compare the economies of North and South Korea.
    - ComradePhil 5y ago
      You can sanction and isolate smaller economies. Larger independent economies will not only be fine if you sanction them, they grow stronger. North Korea is being punished for not wanting to be invaded when America wanted to invade it. South Koreans got invaded and got all the multi-nationals to exploit them... as a result, they have an economy but they spend all their money into looking like their invaders (highest cosmetic surgeries in the world, to make their facial features look western) and kill themselves because they can never become like their invaders (highest suicide rate). If NK is around in its current state when the American empire falls, SK will look to NK to connect back to their roots. I truly hope, for the sake of South Koreans, North Korea manages to live on.

stevespang 5y ago

bagavi 5y ago

Imagine USA being bycotted by all companies for attacking Afghanistan or Iraq. This would unite the US citizens no matter what thier president did. Everyone, think twice before imposing crippling sanctions on a country with nukes.

type0 5y ago
> Everyone, think twice before imposing crippling sanctions on a country with nukes. Just imagined. Imagine all the people... And what do nukes have to do with this exactly?

davidjytang 5y ago

Neither agreeing or disagreeing with Spotify. But what Spotify is doing is anything but cowardly. It takes more to go against the flow where so many is doing one and you are doing the opposite.

Handytinge 5y ago

"I think it's fine for them to be on platforms as long as they share my views and say the things I want them to". Man, what a crybaby. Corporations making meaningless gestures for empty "support" is not a positive, it's virtue signally to sell you more widgets. It's a more subtle version of ads. Why are you asking for more of it?