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Comment by TarasBob | Hacker News Reader

They do not mention they war directly. It’s unbelievable. They are on Putin’s side.

Relevant to mention that since today, mentioning the war carries an up-to 15 year jail term.

Whether this excuses anything is not my point.

This is … sad but a little hilarious in a ridiculous sense. How do they go about telling people “you can’t mention the war or you will go to jail.”?

The person doing the telling… HAS TO MENTION THE WAR. The absurdity boggles the mind.

It's not a war, it's the "special military operation". Calling it a war can be considered a lie in Russia.

Any person in Russia mentioning the war in a way that the kgb dislikes is exposed to prison terms. You can't blame people who have to wake up in Russia for not actively pissing off their government via press release?

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-war-...

Yandex employees are among the few in Russia, who could have left at any time with not much more effort than many of FAANG switch jobs.

I'm not disputing the quality of the engineers or other employees at Yandex. So I'm not sure how that's relevant.

Regardless: Arkady issues a press release saying, "This war is fucking Yandex up, we have no idea what's going to happen, earning in ₽ but investments in $ ain't great, and this surely isn't going to increase uptake of Yandex products abroad."

What precisely is that going to do besides land his ass in YaG-14/10?

You know there's a modern proverb in Russian about doing business in Russia:

1. Do not establish any contracts with government.

2. Do not participate in any governmental organizations or organizations created with any support from the government as a member.

3. Do not have any assets in Russia, that can not be instantly moved out.

4. Do not have any business with any person who might be business partners, friends, clients, family of anyone controlling or participating or in any way related to Russian government. Especially the military or the internal security.

5. Do not have any business with any legal entity involving anyone from number 4. If you have to, always demand full prepayment and mind number 3.

6. Do not incorporate any businesses in Russia, whose activity might contradict goals of persons from number 4 or entities from number 5.

7. Do not create any high earning businesses in Russia. Exceptions are businesses based on intellectual property (that can be sheltered outside), or on personal skills/knowledge (that can't be taken away).

8. Never rely that the courts will take your side even in clear cut cases. Also never rely on any number of qualified lawyers telling you what you are doing is legal in Russia. No matter what the law says, the court can at any time decide otherwise.

9. Never let your business do anything unusual, if it is offered by any entity from numbers 4 and 5, even if (and especially when) certain preferential treatment is offered.

10. Never end up in situation where an immediate and irreversible need to leave Russia is impossible, or complicated, or would have high cost, or would threaten other people. Even if you are precisely following the rules 1-9.

Yandex violates quite a few.

https://movchan.jonny.ru/publications/10-rules/

Yandex definitely violates quite a few. Regardless, I can't imagine Yandex had a choice: between the data residency laws, and the Russian government's views on foreign investment, I don't think they could have kept their servers abroad.

Certainly after the theft of vk from Durov everyone knew what the deal is.

That is exactly my point.

There is also a proverb tailored to IT business in Russia:

1. Keep your servers abroad

2. Register your domains abroad

3. Incorporate abroad

4. Keep your assets abroad. In multiple places (in case one bans Russian transactions)

5. In multiple places! (other governments also suck quite often)

6. Keep your databases abroad

7. Keep logs of all actions and security tight (abroad)

8. Put assets and risks into many separate entities

9. Just skip 1-8 and give everything to Russian government upon incorporation - less headache

10. Move abroad

From 2010 http://blog.micromarketing.ru/advice/9-point-5-rules-fot-it-...

This is directed at western markets. Nobody needs to be told there’s a war on, The company would just expose itself to useless additional risk from the Russian government.

Now I’d wish they’d choose to go down in glory and spread the truth in every way they can, as long as they can. Because in four weeks they are gone no matter what. So far, it doesn’t look like it.

But this press release is just „not being stupid“.

It is not that simple. They are on their families side. Not complying will put them to prison for 15 years https://news.yahoo.com/russia-blocks-twitter-and-facebook-as...

But complying means that their descendents will continue to experience that injustice and worse.

Not it's simple or I always do the right thing, but there is a right thing to do.

It's hard, even heroic to confront the state. But the first thing is not to be one of these folks:

https://www.cnn.com/videos/media/2022/03/04/russia-media-ukr...

If it were possible to target sanctions directly at the war's cheerleaders, that would be great. It's not, and so sanctions harm Russians in the aggregate in the hopes of bringing down support in the aggregate.

Which is why you are on your marry way to volunteer in the Ukrainian army right now...right? Or that standard of bravery only applies to Russians?

Yandex employees are among the tech elite in Russia—overwhelmingly well-educated, liberal, and cosmopolitan. They were opposed to the Crimea invasion in 2014.

You haven't done your homework.

But they still support Kremlin agenda pretty well (search is only one of examples). If not - why they still work there?

This is such a poor argument. It is not like a Russian programmer working in Russia has tons of well paying job options. They can work there because they get to work on interesting problems. Clickhouse came from inside Yandex.

Just because they have to toe the line of a goverment where they operate, should they stop serving the hundreds of millions of Russian people.

Isn't Twitter toeing the line of EU while censoring RT? Not that RT was publishing truth anyway but my point is companies toe the line on the basis of where they operate.

You don't expect Baidu to put the image of Tank man on their home page.

Should Apple employees have quit when the iPhones they designed were being manufactured by labour working in inhumane conditions? At least that was something that Apple could have easily controlled instead of trying to maximize the margins on their products.

> Should Apple employees have quit when the iPhones they designed were being manufactured by labour working in inhumane conditions?

Yes, yes, they absolutely should have done this. They are in the best position to force a change.

In ordinary times, I wouldn't expect Russian citizens living in a brutal autocracy to pursue unrealistic civil disobedience. But these are not ordinary times. While Ukrainian civilians are being shelled, Russian civilians should not expect to live in security and contentment.

Sometimes you have to take scummy jobs to keep a roof over your family’s head.

In fairness, they weren’t supporting a warring regime a month ago. I won’t say I would have worked at Yandex then but it wouldn’t have been the reflexive “no” that it is now.

And yet the censorship.... So it's somewhat moot what those employees are like if they don't control the content.

Or they are a huge company that doesn't want to put their Russian employees in the crosshairs of a government that's quickly reverting to Soviet-style authoritarianism.

This company must be sanctioned and shut down as soon as possible.

Why?

Yandex's business is majority in Russia / near abroad. How do you propose using sanctions to shut down Russian search, Russian taxis, etc?

A press organization that does not report on the actions of an authoritarian government is very much a part of the authoritarian regime.

And the country that sells arms to authoritarian regimes, and press organizations that support said country?

>"It’s unbelievable. They are on Putin’s side"

What is unbelievable is the level of ignorance, hypocrisy and general lack of awareness in people who have free access to information.

They wouldn't be allowed to mention the war.

Also wrong to assume they are on Putins side.

Russia != Putin

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