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Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

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Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#41

Post by roenxi »

p1esk wrote: post #33
just-ok wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Reading the news” hardly gives you the ability to make geopolitical judgments.

Why not? How else would you make geopolitical judgments?

The traditional way has been to organise a panel of bureaucrats and a large diplomatic/informant network spread over multiple countries, where individuals often have multiple decades of experience in their area of the globe. Which still throws up some pretty terrible misjudgements; but that is the baseline for a serious try.

Any group who's state of the art information gathering includes having "a PR department" and reading the news shouldn't be trying to make moral judgements in countries half a world away. They're going to get it wrong, regularly, and start sanctioning people who shouldn't be sanctioned. The news is not reliable enough to make snap commercial decisions.

The only strategy that works in practice at scale is providing a dumb service. These companies are not up to the job of international politics, it is too fraught. If they think they can dip a toe in safely they're just taking on risk for no real gain. At best they can maybe blindly support the US position, which is the more morally questionable side a fair chunk of the time. Ukraine is unusual for me in that a country is being invaded and the US troops aren't explicitly involved.

Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#43

Post by [deleted] »

rswail wrote: post #39
xanaxagoras wrote: post #25

As an R. Kelly fan, this does not surprise me all. Once censorship begins it’s easier and easier to follow that well worn path. A lot of people like to mock the idea of cancel culture and pretend that it doesn’t exist - you know, the plainly disingenuous types who will say “they are a private company” out of one side of their mouth while demanding gay wedding cakes get baked out of the other. And sure there are osten…

> As an R. Kelly fan... You mean Robert Sylvester Kelly, who was found guilty of one count of racketeering and 7 counts of violation of the Mann Act after a jury trial? The same R Kelly that illegally married 15 year old Aaliyah in 1994? The same R Kelly that is now facing further federal charges of child pornography and obstruction? How is he or his cases in any way relevant to censorship or "cancel culture"? The gu…

[deleted]

Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#44

Post by reikonomusha »

haydar_ai wrote: post #2

> Here we may take a break to consider the fact that Russian is not only the language of one country, Russia. It is also the native language for millions of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Therefore it is far from obvious that a Russian-language podcast initiative should be based in Russia. The fact that some people speak Russian in Ukraine/Belarus does not mean that it’s better to do it there. This is like trying to mak…

I wanted to add a bit of footnote commentary on how I understand Russian to be spoken in Ukraine.

Millions of native Ukrainians, especially in the eastern side of Ukraine, exclusively speak Russian, and in fact speak it much better than Ukrainian. [1] (Almost all Ukrainians understand Ukrainian perfectly fine, and even study it in school, but a large contingent don't speak it as their mother tongue.) It's much, much more than just "some Ukrainians", and in fact, it's part of what characteristically and culturally distinguishes some eastern and western/rural and urban regions of Ukraine. [2]

Going into anecdotal territory: This was surprising to me. I hosted a family native to Kharkiv and discussed this topic. I'd think speaking Ukrainian would be a part of one's heritage worth preserving, so it was surprising that speaking Ukrainian wasn't a fluent affair for them, and they also didn't have much interest in promoting the language. Their remarks, extremely simplified, were basically that Russian is so broadly understood that it is just efficient to use, especially because of the internet. They don't want the Ukrainian language to die, but they also don't find it as a practical "daily driver". Their children know Ukrainian from having to learn it in school (but don't really speak it), and their grand-children—who moved to the USA—don't know it at all and only speak Russian.

I'm less familiar with Belarus, but it was an almost identical sentiment about Russian and Belarusian for a Minsk-native family that hosted me.

[1] "Russian is the native language of 29.6% of Ukraine's population [...]." "According to a survey conducted in 2006-2007 by Gallup, 83% of the respondents preferred to conduct the Gallup interview in Russian." "For the preferred language of work, an equal amount chose either Ukrainian or Russian (37%) and 21% communicated bilingually. The study polled 10,071 individuals and held a 1% margin of error." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Ukraine

[2] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4f/Uk...

Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#45

Post by brabel »

trhway wrote: post #32
just-ok wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because they are of a different ethnicity [citation needed]

read Putin speech declaring the war. The people are killed because they of different ethnicity and refuse to play Russians as Putin tries to force them. From his point of view there 2 types of people in Ukraine - Russians and "nazi and benderovcy" with the latter needing to be killed. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/full-tran... and that is summary which says it better than i'd say: https://www.vox…

You have a throwaway account solely created to try to make us, Westerners, believe that the War by Russia is as evil as Hitler's War because it has the same root motivation: ethnic hatred with a genocidal goal.

You may be motivated by your rage against Russia starting this terrible war, or it may be simple counter-propaganda, i.e. Ukrainians lowering themselves to the level they believe the enemy to be for the purpose of motivating despicable actions from either side.

Your interpretation of the Russian motivation for the war shows either complete ignorance of the facts (the historically friendly relationship between Ukrainians and Russians within and across the borders of the two nations) or a disregard for truthness that can only be attributed to being a propagandist who will stop at nothing to get people to believe and do whatever it is you want them to.

Some sources that might educate you a little bit:

[1] https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/05/myths-and-misconception... (this is strongly anti-Russia, but describes in a much better way the relationship between Russians/Belarussians/Ukrainians and their "nationhood", unlike your distorted view of reality).

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrMiSQAGOS4 - Why is Ukraine the West's Fault? Featuring John Mearsheimer (American geopolitics expert, while being less anti-Russia, also attributes blame to the West in this whole story)

Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#46

Post by sofixa »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #27
trhway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a just war or propaganda how hard it is? when only one of the 2 sides bombs civilians and causes millions of people to run away (as of now 1.4M, mostly women/children/elderly, have already crossed the border while many more is still running toward the border) just for the reason of ethnical difference, and thus committing genocide and e…

[flagged]

> but russians protecting their interests against american advances is a problem? cool

If protecting your interests needs a war, creating millions of refugees, untold destruction and who knows how many thousands of dead, you are a piece of shit that doesn't deserve to have interests, and everyone who parrots your bullshit excuses is also a piece of shit ( yes, you). Countries like Ukraine and the Baltics run towards NATO out of fear of Russian aggression ( entirely founded, as we can clearly see).

Two wrongs ( Afghanistan, Iraq whatever you want to whatabout about) don't make a right.

Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#47

Post by tgv »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #18
tgv wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why write such a dismissive comment when that’s not the point at all?

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.

Viewing a company as only having purely financial interests is very limited, IMO. Hey, let's sell hypermodern weaponry to the Russians and the Chinese. It'll make us a quick buck!

But you may well be right that that's all Spotify has, given their predatory business model. What's wrong pointing that out? Why would you even criticize that, given that it's that site's financial incentive?

Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#48

Post by sofixa »

brabel wrote: post #35
trhway wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Spotify is not equipped to make geopolitical judgements about what is and isn't a just war or propaganda how hard it is? when only one of the 2 sides bombs civilians and causes millions of people to run away (as of now 1.4M, mostly women/children/elderly, have already crossed the border while many more is still running toward the border) just for the reason of ethnical difference, and thus committing genocide and e…

> just for the reason of ethnical difference... How the hell has this suddenly become an explanation for the war (or even a thing in the first place)??? No one had ever mentioned Ukrainians being "discriminated" by Russians before the war, quite the opposite, Russian-ethnics and Ukrainians have lived peacefully in Ukraine AND Russia for generations (except for a small minority of far-right nationalists). > committing…

> This is a desperate attempt by some Ukrainians to paint a picture of Russia as being equivalent to Nazi Germany, playing the same Hitler card that Putin did to start the war.

You can't deny there's similarity in how they operate, the excuses they used for "reasons" ( that's not a country, people there are Russian) and the even flimsier excuses they used for the "provocation" (false flag operations) they're "responding" to. There's even the "foreign element we just want to get rid of"(Nazis vs Judeo-Bolsheviks).

Heck, even their strategy is similar, and they even get slowed down by the same mud.

The comparisons are very apt.

Yes, it is a genocide to try to clean out the local population of a city through destruction to settle it with your own (Mariupol).

Re: Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin

#49

Post by rosndo »

brabel wrote: post #45
trhway wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

read Putin speech declaring the war. The people are killed because they of different ethnicity and refuse to play Russians as Putin tries to force them. From his point of view there 2 types of people in Ukraine - Russians and "nazi and benderovcy" with the latter needing to be killed. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-24/full-tran... and that is summary which says it better than i'd say: https://www.vox…

You have a throwaway account solely created to try to make us, Westerners, believe that the War by Russia is as evil as Hitler's War because it has the same root motivation: ethnic hatred with a genocidal goal. You may be motivated by your rage against Russia starting this terrible war, or it may be simple counter-propaganda, i.e. Ukrainians lowering themselves to the level they believe the enemy to be for the purpos…

If you’re going to link Mearsheimer, you could also be honest enough to discuss what other geopolitics scholars think about his take.
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