Hacker News Reader

Comment by mm263 | Hacker News Reader

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).

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

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.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com