5 ms·

Is Valve the only company in the world that is not universally hated by the HN and reddit crowd?

by Kiro 4y ago

ROTMetro 4y ago
No universal but I'm very much anti valve as they are among the few who continue to do business in Russia.
- curiousgal 4y ago
  If Russia is where you draw the line boy do I have news for you! If your standards were universal, you wouldn't be doing business with any company at all.
  - npteljes 4y ago
    Especially with entertainment, I haven't understood the anti-Putin sentiment. Is it really in the West's interest to stop exporting soft power there? Sanctions make sense to me, but this particular industry we should make an exception for, I'd say. Authoritarian regimes try to isolate their populace anyways, it'd be a shame to co-opt that.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      Yes, let's ensure we continue to give young Russian males an outlet to escape from thinking about the current realities in their country. Steam is providing the modern circus in 'bread and circuses'. If anything, this is the exact soft power we should leverage to highlight to those your angst filled males that their current reality is isolating them. Or, we could just give an opium of the masses to keep them indifferent to reality in their rooms because 'soft power'.
      - npteljes 4y ago
        You can be sure that if we don't give them outlets, China will. Do you think nobody would fill the vacuum? If they'd ban every media import, that'd just be an opportunity for the regime to further solidify their own goals. For examples, look at what happened when McDonalds, Coca Cola left the country - they have the same shit, but now without the influence. Whatever there is, there will be abuses of it, so yeah, many would just use the "opium" part of Steam. But there's another aspect of it that would still get imported, and that's any of the narratives that differ from the propaganda they are subjected to. With Steam specifically, they'd be exposed to titles like This War of Mine, and international communities where they'd experience that nobody gives a fuck about them being Russian, or even find it cool, despite the prevalent anti-Western propaganda in their own media. And that all, I think, is worth more than sanctioning it.
      - npteljes 4y ago
        >Steam is providing the modern circus in 'bread and circuses' Also, you know what really provides bread and circuses? Populist bullshit such as "Putin banning LGBT propaganda". Nothing better to take the minds off of pressing issues like further harming a marginalized group. https://news.yahoo.com/vladimir-putin-bans-lgbt-propaganda-180942974.html https://news.yahoo.com/vladimir-putin-bans-lgbt-propaganda-1...
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      As a whole, Russian nationalists were popping champagne corks when Western media and other influence operations left Russia. It was basically everything they wanted. Given to them for free. By their enemies. Everything that cuts a dependency also cuts an influence vector and increases sovereignty. The world is moving to regional blocks -- a Western block of North America and Europe, a Eurasian block of Russia/India/Iran/Middle-East/China, and the loyalties of Africa/Latin America are where the wars for influence will be fought, with Africa tilting toward Eurasia and Latin America tilting toward the West. Other battle grounds would be marginal areas like Southeast Asia/Pacific Islands and in Europe the balkans. In that context, it makes no sense for the Eurasian block to allow a business to operate domestically from an enemy block. Why on earth would you let them influence your population? For the same reason, Eurasian influence operations are being banned in the West, from Confucian Institutes to Sputnik News. The main entrypoints to a block will be those nations that have sufficiently rigid control over their domestic populations to feel free with enemy dependencies -- that would be the US and China, both with impressive soft power and sophisticated information control regimes. That is why US made films that are shown in China often have to have different scenes in them - sometimes shot with different endings -- and there are strict limits. China has their own system of deboosting content and their own troll farms. Same for any kind of internet presence and also video games and other media. Likewise, the US has a sophisticated system of banning and other soft "deboosting" of views that run counter to official regime narratives. There is a whole industry to identify counter-narrative views and brand them as "misinformation" that must be rooted out. Russia has a much less sophisticated information space defense system for this, and much less soft power, so for them outright bans and blocks are the only viable option, and this was given to them by the West on a platter. Amazing self-own.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    As a hippie that lives in the Rocky mountains, why do you assume I do business with large corporations? And I definitely feel let down by Steam's take to continue to provide entertainment for the masses so that they don't have to contemplate what their country is doing. They are the circus in bread and circuses. But yes you are right, I should just be paralyzed from basing my opinion of any company because 'other companies, other countries'. What a productive take that would be.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      I just need to point out these 'it's pointless to do anything' people are wrong. My small mountain town's 1Gb fiber ISP is local. Our power company is a co-op. The gas station I use is a co-op. My limited meat consumption comes from an organic Mennonite family farm. Summer months my produce comes from a local CSA and I'm lucky to have a great local flower CSA as well. You can actually live in the modern world in comfort AND choose how you live, even in the USA.
      - roflyear 4y ago
        Where do they get their gas?
      - civopsec 4y ago
        Local co-ops are the opiates of the hippie masses. It keeps them plump and happy in their little faux communes and away from the fight against corporations, state and federal government. As someone who lives 5000 “miles” away I feel really strongly about judging these hillbillies/rockabillies that I’ve never met and I for some reason feel that they should be inconvenienced so that they can take up the fight against their government, which after all is the biggest imperial power on the planet.
- vlunkr 4y ago
  What would be the point in cutting regular Russian citizens off from video games? It may actually be a good way to communicate with them.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Video games are the modern 'circus' in 'bread and circuses' it provides an opiate for that masses to escape from confronting their current situation and gives the government an escape valve for young male angst. As to communication, have you seen Russianss on the Steam forums? It's all Zs, Russian flags, and ethnic slurs against Ukrainians.
    - vlunkr 4y ago
      I can see that, but it's a complex situation and I have counterpoints. - Young male angst has no shortage of outlets. Sports, both extreme and normal, tons of existing media, pirated media, blowing stuff up, etc. Taking away Steam accounts likely isn't going to turn them into revolutionaries. - In response the existing comments from Russians, that could be selection bias. Many of them could be commenting normally or not at all. After all, most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people. - Part of the problem in Russia is extreme media bias/propaganda. Further isolating them from foreign contact and influences can only make that worse and reinforce the narrative that everyone else is out to get them.
      - ROTMetro 4y ago
        So, the users of Steam and what they post on their public pages, is selection bias when judging the usefulness of communicating with... the users of Steam?
        npteljes 4y ago
        Yes, selection bias. Loud people are easy to spot. Lurkers are hard to spot. A loud minority, therefore, can create the illusion of a larger mass of similar folk. Take, for example, the gamergate situation. There was just SO much toxic communication, it was a complete shitstorm, where many were attacked online in a horrible manner. So, gamers sure are a toxic bunch, right? Well, turns out, there are 1.5 billion gamers on PC alone. I'm sure 95% percent of them never even heard about such a thing as gamergate. https://gamerant.com/3-billion-gamers-report/ https://gamerant.com/3-billion-gamers-report/
- kilolima 4y ago
  The best pirated game scenes are Russian, Valve exiting the market world mean very little. It's also a huge benefit to the rest of the world that Russian/ex Soviet culture has both very little respect for Western intellectual property laws and the technological abilities to make software and digital media easily available.
- jeff_carr 4y ago
  Punishing people living under totalitarian rule might not be a good idea.
jimbob45 4y ago
JetBrains maybe?
- pxc 4y ago
  also probably Tailscale
- stusmall 4y ago
  Every now and then I see some brain-dead hand-wringing about them being an agent of the Russian state. I saw a lot soon after the war started. The other time I saw a lot was right after that hack that involved TeamCity. HN and Reddit aren't hive minds and both hold a lot of diverse opinions. Nothing is universally loved on either. Today's society can longer agree on agree on fundamentals like if the earth is round or if democracy is good. So it isn't a huge surprise that not everyone has accepted The Infallible Glory that is the Jetbrains product roster (A little joking in that last bit.... but just a little. All praise CLion)
sgjohnson 4y ago
Cloudflare?
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  I personally dislike cloudflare for not dropping KF, not sure if that's a majority opinion.
  - smoldesu 4y ago
    Yeah, even though I'd agree that KF is detestable, the way Cloudflare cracked under pressure was a public embarrassment. It's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt these days.
    - heywhatupboys 4y ago
      > Yeah, even though I'd agree that KF is detestable I am very curious about this tbh. Has anyone here gone to that site? I read that they just report publicly available info that people have voluenteered online. While I understand that doxxing is terrible and so is targeted harassment, are they that much worse than the daily mail or any other gossip magazine?
      - ever1337 4y ago
        the difference between KF and a tabloid is that KF members go out of their way to interfere in their targets' lives
        smoldesu 4y ago
        The larger difference is that KiwiFarms members don't get paid for what they do. That being said, you can be disgusted by something while still accepting it as a valid form of self-expression. Real-life crimes deserve prosecution to the fullest extent of the law, but people being mean online is a shitty justification for deciding to void an entire website. It's entirely Cloudflare's choice to make, but it's value as a virtue signal is vastly outweighed by how many CF customers are wringing their hands now.
Semaphor 4y ago
Another company is Fastmail. Usually loved on HN, not really talked about on Reddit (at least where I see it)
christophilus 4y ago
There are many. Mozilla isn’t universally hated. Apple is another. I’d say Valve comes close to being universally loved here, though, and that is pretty unique.
- zach_garwood 4y ago
  Apple is a weird one from my perspective. I dislike Safari, but overall I'm pretty ambivalent about Apple in general. But most devs I've met IRL seem to despise them, while HN seems to mostly have a positive view.
  - yurishimo 4y ago
    Most devs don't develop on/for Apple platforms. HN has a huge amount of SV developers though and FAANG which lean Apple anyway. If you work at Google, you need to make sure your products work on Apple devices, so you probably use a Mac since the dev environment is locked to the platform. If you work for a shop in Omaha Nebraska making software for surrounding businesses, you probably use Windows.

Is Valve the only company in the world that is not universally hated by the HN and reddit crowd?

by Kiro 4y ago

Is Valve the only company in the world that is not universally hated by the HN and reddit crowd?

ROTMetro 4y ago

No universal but I'm very much anti valve as they are among the few who continue to do business in Russia.

curiousgal 4y ago
If Russia is where you draw the line boy do I have news for you! If your standards were universal, you wouldn't be doing business with any company at all.
- npteljes 4y ago
  Especially with entertainment, I haven't understood the anti-Putin sentiment. Is it really in the West's interest to stop exporting soft power there? Sanctions make sense to me, but this particular industry we should make an exception for, I'd say. Authoritarian regimes try to isolate their populace anyways, it'd be a shame to co-opt that.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    Yes, let's ensure we continue to give young Russian males an outlet to escape from thinking about the current realities in their country. Steam is providing the modern circus in 'bread and circuses'. If anything, this is the exact soft power we should leverage to highlight to those your angst filled males that their current reality is isolating them. Or, we could just give an opium of the masses to keep them indifferent to reality in their rooms because 'soft power'.
    - npteljes 4y ago
      You can be sure that if we don't give them outlets, China will. Do you think nobody would fill the vacuum? If they'd ban every media import, that'd just be an opportunity for the regime to further solidify their own goals. For examples, look at what happened when McDonalds, Coca Cola left the country - they have the same shit, but now without the influence. Whatever there is, there will be abuses of it, so yeah, many would just use the "opium" part of Steam. But there's another aspect of it that would still get imported, and that's any of the narratives that differ from the propaganda they are subjected to. With Steam specifically, they'd be exposed to titles like This War of Mine, and international communities where they'd experience that nobody gives a fuck about them being Russian, or even find it cool, despite the prevalent anti-Western propaganda in their own media. And that all, I think, is worth more than sanctioning it.
    - npteljes 4y ago
      >Steam is providing the modern circus in 'bread and circuses' Also, you know what really provides bread and circuses? Populist bullshit such as "Putin banning LGBT propaganda". Nothing better to take the minds off of pressing issues like further harming a marginalized group. https://news.yahoo.com/vladimir-putin-bans-lgbt-propaganda-180942974.html https://news.yahoo.com/vladimir-putin-bans-lgbt-propaganda-1...
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    As a whole, Russian nationalists were popping champagne corks when Western media and other influence operations left Russia. It was basically everything they wanted. Given to them for free. By their enemies. Everything that cuts a dependency also cuts an influence vector and increases sovereignty. The world is moving to regional blocks -- a Western block of North America and Europe, a Eurasian block of Russia/India/Iran/Middle-East/China, and the loyalties of Africa/Latin America are where the wars for influence will be fought, with Africa tilting toward Eurasia and Latin America tilting toward the West. Other battle grounds would be marginal areas like Southeast Asia/Pacific Islands and in Europe the balkans. In that context, it makes no sense for the Eurasian block to allow a business to operate domestically from an enemy block. Why on earth would you let them influence your population? For the same reason, Eurasian influence operations are being banned in the West, from Confucian Institutes to Sputnik News. The main entrypoints to a block will be those nations that have sufficiently rigid control over their domestic populations to feel free with enemy dependencies -- that would be the US and China, both with impressive soft power and sophisticated information control regimes. That is why US made films that are shown in China often have to have different scenes in them - sometimes shot with different endings -- and there are strict limits. China has their own system of deboosting content and their own troll farms. Same for any kind of internet presence and also video games and other media. Likewise, the US has a sophisticated system of banning and other soft "deboosting" of views that run counter to official regime narratives. There is a whole industry to identify counter-narrative views and brand them as "misinformation" that must be rooted out. Russia has a much less sophisticated information space defense system for this, and much less soft power, so for them outright bans and blocks are the only viable option, and this was given to them by the West on a platter. Amazing self-own.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  As a hippie that lives in the Rocky mountains, why do you assume I do business with large corporations? And I definitely feel let down by Steam's take to continue to provide entertainment for the masses so that they don't have to contemplate what their country is doing. They are the circus in bread and circuses. But yes you are right, I should just be paralyzed from basing my opinion of any company because 'other companies, other countries'. What a productive take that would be.
  - ROTMetro 4y ago
    I just need to point out these 'it's pointless to do anything' people are wrong. My small mountain town's 1Gb fiber ISP is local. Our power company is a co-op. The gas station I use is a co-op. My limited meat consumption comes from an organic Mennonite family farm. Summer months my produce comes from a local CSA and I'm lucky to have a great local flower CSA as well. You can actually live in the modern world in comfort AND choose how you live, even in the USA.
    - roflyear 4y ago
      Where do they get their gas?
    - civopsec 4y ago
      Local co-ops are the opiates of the hippie masses. It keeps them plump and happy in their little faux communes and away from the fight against corporations, state and federal government. As someone who lives 5000 “miles” away I feel really strongly about judging these hillbillies/rockabillies that I’ve never met and I for some reason feel that they should be inconvenienced so that they can take up the fight against their government, which after all is the biggest imperial power on the planet.
vlunkr 4y ago
What would be the point in cutting regular Russian citizens off from video games? It may actually be a good way to communicate with them.
- ROTMetro 4y ago
  Video games are the modern 'circus' in 'bread and circuses' it provides an opiate for that masses to escape from confronting their current situation and gives the government an escape valve for young male angst. As to communication, have you seen Russianss on the Steam forums? It's all Zs, Russian flags, and ethnic slurs against Ukrainians.
  - vlunkr 4y ago
    I can see that, but it's a complex situation and I have counterpoints. - Young male angst has no shortage of outlets. Sports, both extreme and normal, tons of existing media, pirated media, blowing stuff up, etc. Taking away Steam accounts likely isn't going to turn them into revolutionaries. - In response the existing comments from Russians, that could be selection bias. Many of them could be commenting normally or not at all. After all, most of what you read on the internet is written by insane people. - Part of the problem in Russia is extreme media bias/propaganda. Further isolating them from foreign contact and influences can only make that worse and reinforce the narrative that everyone else is out to get them.
    - ROTMetro 4y ago
      So, the users of Steam and what they post on their public pages, is selection bias when judging the usefulness of communicating with... the users of Steam?
      - npteljes 4y ago
        Yes, selection bias. Loud people are easy to spot. Lurkers are hard to spot. A loud minority, therefore, can create the illusion of a larger mass of similar folk. Take, for example, the gamergate situation. There was just SO much toxic communication, it was a complete shitstorm, where many were attacked online in a horrible manner. So, gamers sure are a toxic bunch, right? Well, turns out, there are 1.5 billion gamers on PC alone. I'm sure 95% percent of them never even heard about such a thing as gamergate. https://gamerant.com/3-billion-gamers-report/ https://gamerant.com/3-billion-gamers-report/
kilolima 4y ago
The best pirated game scenes are Russian, Valve exiting the market world mean very little. It's also a huge benefit to the rest of the world that Russian/ex Soviet culture has both very little respect for Western intellectual property laws and the technological abilities to make software and digital media easily available.
jeff_carr 4y ago
Punishing people living under totalitarian rule might not be a good idea.

jimbob45 4y ago

JetBrains maybe?

pxc 4y ago
also probably Tailscale
stusmall 4y ago
Every now and then I see some brain-dead hand-wringing about them being an agent of the Russian state. I saw a lot soon after the war started. The other time I saw a lot was right after that hack that involved TeamCity. HN and Reddit aren't hive minds and both hold a lot of diverse opinions. Nothing is universally loved on either. Today's society can longer agree on agree on fundamentals like if the earth is round or if democracy is good. So it isn't a huge surprise that not everyone has accepted The Infallible Glory that is the Jetbrains product roster (A little joking in that last bit.... but just a little. All praise CLion)

sgjohnson 4y ago

Cloudflare?

ParetoOptimal 4y ago
I personally dislike cloudflare for not dropping KF, not sure if that's a majority opinion.
- smoldesu 4y ago
  Yeah, even though I'd agree that KF is detestable, the way Cloudflare cracked under pressure was a public embarrassment. It's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt these days.
  - heywhatupboys 4y ago
    > Yeah, even though I'd agree that KF is detestable I am very curious about this tbh. Has anyone here gone to that site? I read that they just report publicly available info that people have voluenteered online. While I understand that doxxing is terrible and so is targeted harassment, are they that much worse than the daily mail or any other gossip magazine?
    - ever1337 4y ago
      the difference between KF and a tabloid is that KF members go out of their way to interfere in their targets' lives
      - smoldesu 4y ago
        The larger difference is that KiwiFarms members don't get paid for what they do. That being said, you can be disgusted by something while still accepting it as a valid form of self-expression. Real-life crimes deserve prosecution to the fullest extent of the law, but people being mean online is a shitty justification for deciding to void an entire website. It's entirely Cloudflare's choice to make, but it's value as a virtue signal is vastly outweighed by how many CF customers are wringing their hands now.

Semaphor 4y ago

Another company is Fastmail. Usually loved on HN, not really talked about on Reddit (at least where I see it)

christophilus 4y ago

There are many. Mozilla isn’t universally hated. Apple is another. I’d say Valve comes close to being universally loved here, though, and that is pretty unique.

zach_garwood 4y ago
Apple is a weird one from my perspective. I dislike Safari, but overall I'm pretty ambivalent about Apple in general. But most devs I've met IRL seem to despise them, while HN seems to mostly have a positive view.
- yurishimo 4y ago
  Most devs don't develop on/for Apple platforms. HN has a huge amount of SV developers though and FAANG which lean Apple anyway. If you work at Google, you need to make sure your products work on Apple devices, so you probably use a Mac since the dev environment is locked to the platform. If you work for a shop in Omaha Nebraska making software for surrounding businesses, you probably use Windows.