You've posted 7 highly repetitive comments taking this thread straight into flamewar hell. That's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules, we'd appreciate it.
Hijacking top comments when flamebait hasn't succeeded in setting an entire thread on fire yet is particularly abusive.
> Yandex Search engine hides the pictures of Bucha and Irpin massacre as well as Kharkiv and Mariupol destruction
That's just not true, try it yourself. It just does not display the latest images by default (though it's easily turned on in the filter settings), and that's why on the very day the news appeared on the Internet, people went crazy about that Yandex somehow "hides the truth"...
> Yandex News service ignores the genocide currently happening in Ukraine
That is actually required by the Russian regulations on news aggregator services. Yeah, those regulations are unfair and oppressive, but it's the local law to which Yandex must comply. And by the way, they're going to get rid of that toxic asset: https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/28/yandex-sells-news-zen-vk
(I suppose they can't just shut it down because the government threatens to nationalize Yandex in response)
> Yandex supports the Russian Terrorist regime
Can you please show any public statement from Yandex from which one could derive that?
That comes from where? The repercussions could have been very severe. The Russian government easily takes over and seizes control over "rogue companies". Russia is not a free country, my friend.
I am from Russia (though moved to Turkiye once war began) and I do have several friends working at Yandex on different positions including some quite high in management. So I well aware about their reasoning behind keeping working at Yandex.
Basically even today after war has began and tens of thousands were killed on both sides some of people working there still hold the illusion that they could continue to live in their bubble and continue to innovate in Russia like nothing happen. So no, they are not some poor IT company opressed by the government. Every employee who wanted to immigrate was able to move abroad.
6-10 years ago Yandex can certainly shut down their news service without being seized. Back in 2008-2012 one of Yandex co-founders and ex-CTO Ilya Segalovich was often visitor of street protests almost until his death in 2013 and this did not caused company to be seized.
> I suppose they can't just shut it down because the government threatens to nationalize Yandex in response
They can destroy equipment, safely delete all the code repositories etc. beforehand, thus rendering the company useless before the nationalization. But $$$ is more important.
> Can you please show any public statement from Yandex from which one could derive that?
Yandex pays tens/hundreds of millions in taxes and thus finances the war.
> Yandex pays tens/hundreds of millions in taxes and thus finances the war.
So what? You shut down the business with 20k employees, on the grounds that you do not agree with local regulations or because the government did bad? That is as far from reality as it gets.
> But $$$ is more important
Yeah, I think preserving the company is more important than that proposed suicide move (that wouldn't have worked anyway because the company is just too huge).
It's not just money, it's people, it's culture, it's all the great projects the company does.
The Russian army is not sponsored by Yandex. The money comes from selling natural resources... and mostly to Europe, surprise. It's about $1 billion per day. Tax money from private companies is nothing compared to that. So Europe is sponsoring the war way more than Yandex.
Let's then shut down the Europe, right? You can say — look, they're trying hard to get rid of Russian resources. But Yandex is also trying hard to become less dependent on Russian economy — they try to internationalize their business. And all that "canceling" of Yandex really doesn't help (it does the opposite in fact).
> So Europe is sponsoring the war way more than Yandex.
That's unfortunately true. The dependency is real, and it will take a long time to get rid of it.
> And all that "canceling" of Yandex really doesn't help (it does the opposite in fact).
Cancelling Yandex completely, as in forcing it to collapse, would help a lot. Yandex services (together with VK) are extremely important in the Russian society and economy, and their collapse would weaken Russia and its ability to wage (military/economic) war a lot. As such, this would be the best course of action (as mentioned before, burn the equipment, delete the code).
> Cancelling Yandex completely, as in forcing it to collapse, would help a lot.
It's just a wishful thinking. It wont "collapse", it would just become controlled by government, and then it truly becomes the instrument of the evil, so that not only News, but every service Yandex provides will serve the government needs. They will recruit soldiers through Yandex services, they make Yandex develop AI-controlled tanks and whatnot. Every thing that Yandex doesn't do now (because they do not actually support the war) — they will make it to do.
> their collapse would weaken Russia and its ability to wage (military/economic) war a lot
Of course not, because the Russian army and the military industrial complex is in no way dependent on the search engine and the food delivery service Yandex provides. You can destroy those, sure. People lifes get slightly worse, and then competitors catch up (there is a lot of competition to Yandex in Russia and they are not going to fade away).
> It's just a wishful thinking. It wont "collapse", it would just become controlled by government
That's why part of my suggestion is to burn the equipment/infrastructure and delete the code.
> They will recruit soldiers through Yandex services, they make Yandex develop AI-controlled tanks and whatnot
And the only thing stopping them now from doing that is that Yandex is not nationalized. Yeah, sure.
> Of course not, because the Russian army and the military industrial complex is in no way dependent on the search engine and the food delivery service Yandex provides.
Yandex provides many services, it's much like google - maps, translation, drive, mail etc. etc. Bringing it down would cripple many private and economic activities. Russia can't sustain waging wars if they don't have an economy and disgruntled population.
With the exception of VK, there isn't really any step-in competition to Yandex. Even if there was, losing all your data in e.g. mail/drive will have significant consequences.
> Russia can't sustain waging wars if they don't have an economy and disgruntled population.
Russia can wage wars on natural resource selling alone, it only needs to keep the gas and oil flowing through the infrastructure. All those private companies' activities the government sees mostly as a distraction, it doesn't give a damn about them (until they get in the way). They don't matter much.
It's very much unlike the Western economies where the private companies drive the economy. Russia is more like a giant oil and gas pipe with military industrial complex around that.
> exception of VK, there isn't really any step-in competition to Yandex
If we talk about city services (taxi, delivery, online shopping) there are lots of other players. Search/mail/social — then yeah, apart from VK not many. And VK is in fact state-owned. Yandex is not. So if Yandex leaves the scene, the only game in town would be state-owned. This only reinforces the evil regime.
> That's why part of my suggestion is to burn the equipment/infrastructure and delete the code.
It's pretty unrealistic. You can do it in small company, easy. In a huge decentralized company I don't know how one could even pull that off. There simply isn't a way to "delete all the code", nor a single place you could burn all the servers. It just doesn't have a kill switch. And the moment you try that, the government swoops in and goodbye the company.
> And the only thing stopping them now from doing that is that Yandex is not nationalized. Yeah, sure.
If Yandex gets nationalized, the government will replace the management and the uncooperative employees. Most of them would just leave the day it happens. It won't be Yandex anymore of course. That is essentially the same as killing the company, but worse, as the remnants could still be used for evil.
> Russia can wage wars on natural resource selling alone, it only needs to keep the gas and oil flowing through the infrastructure.
With sanctions it can't.
> So if Yandex leaves the scene, the only game in town would be state-owned. This only reinforces the evil regime.
It doesn't. Nationalization of companies rarely works well. Even then they can be hurt, made unprofitable, forcing the evil regime to divert resources.
> In a huge decentralized company I don't know how one could even pull that off.
A lot of things are not that decentralized. GitHub/GitLab is actually central, just delete it. Dev machines can be wiped out remotely. Private keys, certs, credentials are stored somewhere more or less centrally. Delete the user data on the servers.
You can make a lot of damage. It might not be perfect, somewhere git clones might survive, but it will cause a major outage/data loss.
> And the moment you try that, the government swoops in and goodbye the company.
You overestimate the ability of state to react quickly enough. If you plan ahead, this can be pulled off in short time.
> That is essentially the same as killing the company
So what? You're somehow attached to keeping the company afloat. It has no value compared to hundreds of people being killed daily in the war as we speak.
It does not need to "go well". All the government needs is control. They have VK (controlled by Putin's people). They will be happy with either outcome with Yandex — kill Yandex entirely, and people will just switch to using VK services. Make Yandex controlled by the government, and then its resources will be used for evil purposes. So either way it favors the government, reducing overall freedom.
> It has no value
It has the value. I insist that the net profit from "killing Yandex" is strictly negative, as it has not even zero effect on preventing actual people from getting killed — the actual effect would be the other way around.
> With sanctions it can't.
Unfortunately, not true. Even if Europe stops buying Russian resources today, the remaining profits from selling to China, India and etc. would cover the expenses. The oil and gas prices will greatly rise (it already happens), so that would compensate the losing of the European markets.
Back on topic, are you in favor of releasing language models if it means we won't be able to prevent the Russians from using them for propaganda for example?
As long as we're going on tangents, according to the Zach Vorhies leak, Google censors lots and lots of topics for blatantly political reasons[1].
