Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

Do you think Putin is going to care that Spotify closed the office if they're defying his censorship laws? The (former) employees are still going to be in Russia. They're still going to be associated with Spotify and subject to arrest. This not a normal legal system where you can prove to someone in a court that you no longer worked at the company and they're going to consider the merits of your argument. Putin will want to punish someone for Spotify defying his censorship order and he'll reach out and punish whoever is available to make an example, regardless of whether they are responsible.

RT propaganda is an organic part, a psyop, of the genocidal war in Ukraine. There is nothing about free speech in refusal to support genocidal war. If anything it is a duty of any normal person (and any company consisting of such people).

There is nothing bold about halting trade with Russia right now; as far as can be told there is a great deal of social and political support for anyone making such a choice.

To be honest, companies making emotional decisions is more concerning to me. It is reasonable and to be encouraged if businesses want to be a moral-less dumb pipe. Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a just war or propaganda & can achieve nothing against the Russian military. If they just stick to following the law that is fine. If something is required of them then the military leadership can ask them to do it.

It captured the tone of the article to me, reading in too deep to motivations of a publically traded company where there might be easily explained, boring, financial incentives. Don't know why anyone expects a corporation to take the moral high ground.

IDK... I think the right thing to do isn't entirely obvious.

>> a better alternative would have been to keep operating, while declaring openly that their media machine will be available for the dissidents in Russia

>> At an absolute minimum, Spotify could have let its Russian users face recommended playlists on the theme of “peace”.

I remember when Google initially came into conflict with China's censorship. The government wanted them to conform to the chinese way, censoring bad content on their own initiative without receiving an explicit list. A particular bugbear was returning search results that link to sites blocked by the great firewall. ATT, Google's "don't be evil" was still standing as a slogan. Early 2000s internet naivety still had some punch. China's attempt to censor the internet seemed foolish and doomed.

Anyway Google eventually tucked tail and learned that they cannot conflict with the CCP and come away with a win.

A decade later and we're knee deep in a clunky, controversial and blunt anti-misinformation vs free speech balance. Try that in a war zone.

Realistically, I think companies have two choices... more or less. They can stay or they can go. Multinational companies are not emissaries of anything but economics. We shouldn't expect them to be independent participants in international conflicts.

Luckily, Spotify's podcast strategy has not succeeded yet. Most podcasts are still distributed as podcasts, via RSS. They're one of the most free forms of online media. Spotify is trying to build a walled garden around this last piece of wilderness. The best thing spotify can do to enable free media in wartime is to just go away.