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Comment by 7373737373 | Hacker News Reader

If you can't judge that funding war criminals is a wrong action, you should reconsider your ability to do so morally

Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised, startup founders aren't exactly known for putting anything else above money and their ideas, particularly actual human well-being.

Consider that you, too, will have to live in the world that you help create, including the consequences of "a mere 2%"

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> If you can't judge that funding war criminals is a wrong action

Yandex does not equal Russia though.

The United States gov't has participated in what many consider illegal acts of aggression (i.e., war crimes) and do so using tools like PowerPoint. Is it moral to accept Microsoft as a client?

I'm not saying I know the right answer here, but the purity test you're proposing seems quite stringent.

You'll be shocked to learn that some people avoid US products for exactly the reasons you've mentioned. Right now some avoid Israeli stuff for similar reasons. And so it shouldn't be a shock to learn that some people don't want their money to end up in pockets of Russians and their state (via taxes).

Is Yandex directly complicit in war crimes?

I can't vouch for the source, but this provides a factual chronology of Yandex's (forced) integration into Russian state propaganda:

https://www.zois-berlin.de/en/publications/zois-spotlight/th...

Okay, propaganda, sure. Propaganda is a different argument - it compromises the quality of search - and I will happily agree with you. I want to emphasize, that the claim was: using Yandex through Kagi is supporting war criminals. Which war criminals? Which war crimes is Yandex complicit in? I plainly do not accept that propaganda === war crimes.

>I plainly do not accept that propaganda === war crimes

I'd say propaganda is often necessary, and usually successful, at allowing governments to execute war crimes. I think most modern war crimes are lied out of existence by propaganda outlets like Yandex (or any number of US news outlets at other points in recent history).

Following that reasoning, is Gazprom invading a country? No? Then I guess we should buy their gas. Why not send the latest and greatest ASML lithography machine to Mikron? It's not like they're actually launching the missile using the processor they manufacture.

And so on. You can see the problem with this...

It would be interesting to know people’s views on sanctions against Russia, as these are a key tool against Russia and the logic is much as you have described here. My guess is that HN users don’t support sanctions.

They are accused of sending Ukrainian users data to the Russian state.

Also, ‘In August 2024, the company was accused of collaborating with the Federal Security Service (FSB) to direct users to fake websites for the Freedom of Russia Legion and the Russian Volunteer Corps, groups composed of Russian supporters of Ukraine. The websites collected data from Russians who may be interested in joining the organisations and supporting Ukraine.’

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yandex

In my estimation, Facebook/Meta and Google/Alphabet both inflict more damage on the world than Kagi. I trust that you judge them equally harshly and do not use them?

Well, the US and a lot of the US companies fund the Palestinian genocide, and you're OK with that, so people support the genocides they like. So don't be a hypocrite.

So by your logic everyone who participates in capitalism (including yourself) is immoral.

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