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

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.