Spotify made a cowardly choice: to submit to the Kremlin • Hacker News Board

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

#71

Post by sofixa » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 12:02 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #69

sofixa wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ukraine: to abandon plans to join NATO. No, for Ukraine and NATO to sign a guarantee Ukraine will never join NATO. Which is a ridiculous thing to ask, just like Danzig, or the Autro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia was. And of course, it was 1) deliberately unacceptable 2) all for show, as Kadyrov's leaked communications show ( he's talking about the impeding invasion weeks in advance). The lack of complete parity doe…

> The lack of complete parity doesn't impede drawing parallels where they exist, and there are a lot of them. The parallels you're drawing could've been drawn with every single other armed conflict in history.

Do share a few examples where:

* the aggressor makes an impossible to accept ultimatum

* claims their enemy isn't really of a different ethnicity and historically belongs to the aggressor

* stages false flag operations to excuse their invasion

None of these is in any way new, or revolutionary, and wasn't invented by the Nazis, or the Austrians in WWI, but it's not a mandatory element of every other armed conflict of history. And even if it were, it's still valid to compare to other such conflicts, like WWI and WWII, including the Nazis.

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

#72

Post by brabel » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 12:06 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #56

brabel wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I can deny, there's no similarity at all.. There's no concentration camps. There's no gas chambers. There's no ideology of a supreme race. Nothing at all is similar. While I do agree Putin's speech was based on flimsy excuses, the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum[1], which you seem to have forgotten, which only asked one thing of Ukraine: to abandon plans…

> the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum The actual trigger of the war was Putin’s order to invade. The list of demands issued to the West prior wasn't even cited as a pretext for the special military operation when it was announced, though it had some conceptual overlap with a subset of the very long lost of grievances and excuses cited in the announcement of…

I can agree with you on most points. Where we seem to disagree is at the point where subjectivity is required to interpret the intentions of either side.

> BUT it also demanded of NATO that it be permanently banned from any further expansion...

That was not a demand that involved Ukraine, and my assertion about what the ultimatum asked "of Ukraine", not of NATO. So there's no disagreement here. The other demands were unacceptable to the West, but probably thrown in for leverage in negotiations, but the West's response was that even Ukraine not joining NATO was out of the question, so we'll never know for sure if that would've been enough to prevent war.

> the ultimatum was targeted at NATO, and specifically at removing it's capacity to interfere should Russia choose to invade...

That's your interpretation of what the demands were aiming for... here's another:

"the ultimatum was targeted at NATO, and aimed specifically at stopping it from expanding into Russian neighbours and placing weapons there, including atomic weapons (which is a requirement of nations that join NATO[1]), threatening Russia right at its border."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_sharing

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

#73

Post by mejutoco » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 12:13 PM UTC

reikonomusha wrote: post #44

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…

I am not sure if how well a language is spoken is a good metric.

As an example, a lot of older people do not speak fully correct Catalan, since it was prohibited during decades and they could not learn it formally.

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

#74

Post by dragonwriter » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 12:22 PM UTC

brabel wrote: post #72

dragonwriter wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the actual trigger of the war was the West's refusal to accept Russian terms in their ultimatum The actual trigger of the war was Putin’s order to invade. The list of demands issued to the West prior wasn't even cited as a pretext for the special military operation when it was announced, though it had some conceptual overlap with a subset of the very long lost of grievances and excuses cited in the announcement of…

I can agree with you on most points. Where we seem to disagree is at the point where subjectivity is required to interpret the intentions of either side. > BUT it also demanded of NATO that it be permanently banned from any further expansion... That was not a demand that involved Ukraine, and my assertion about what the ultimatum asked "of Ukraine", not of NATO. So there's no disagreement here. The other demands were…

> the West's response was that even Ukraine not joining NATO was out of the question,

No, it wasn't. Ukraine not joining NATO is the status quo. It is obviously acceptable to NATO, though Ukraine isn't too happy about it.

Ukraine’s response was that permanently ruling out NATO membership was unacceptable.

NATO's response was that every single other element was unacceptable, including the permanent ban on NATO expansion (which, of course, would ban Ukraine from membership whether or not Ukraine accepted what was demanded of it.)

> including atomic weapons (which is a requirement of nations that join NATO),

That description is simply false as a characterization of the nuclear sharing arrangement you cite to support it. NATO nuclear sharing agreements all predate the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and no country that has joined NATO since Turkey (and only a few of the earlier ones) has one. They are not required of countries that join NATO, or even available to them.

Also, pedantically, describing them as dealing with “atomic” weapons is incorrect, as that phrase refers to a specific subset of nuclear weapons, and all weapons known to be deployed under nuclear sharing arrangements — because it's what the dual-use aircraft they are tied to are made to deliver — are B61 thermonuclear, not atomic, bombs.

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

#75

Post by tomohawk » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 12:53 PM UTC

This seems like a minor quibble compared to Biden not just refusing to stop buying oil from Russia, but encouraging companies like Shell to do so. Or only sanctioning 25% of the Russian banks, but making it sound like they're sanctioning all of them. Or not sanctioning Belarus.

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

#76

Post by ComradePhil » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 1:47 PM UTC

These companies banning Russia is AMAZING opportunity for the Russian government. If Russia is run by smart people, they must be delighted by it.

All they have to do is wait for these companies to block them... and then use the opportunity to block it from their side never letting them come back to the market... and let the alternatives grow in the local market.

That way, they get to keep the population from being dependent on foreign infrastructure and they don't even have to take responsibility for blocking them themselves.

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

#77

Post by 2Gkashmiri » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 1:50 PM UTC

sofixa wrote: post #46

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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…

you are literally listing out my reasons. thank you for that, my point stands

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

#78

Post by rendall » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 2:13 PM UTC

imgabe wrote: post #12

readthenotes1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your point of view might have some merit to it if there a basis in fact. Do you dispute the author's claim "On Wednesday night [March 2], Spotify announced that it is closing its Moscow office"?

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…

It's your contention that Spotify's decisions have been driven by concern for their ex-employees in Moscow?

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

#79

Post by netcan » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 2:24 PM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #67

netcan wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an extreme position, and IMO unrealistic. The key term here is " a moral-less dumb pipe ." I'm not sure it's even realistic to expect "dumb pipes" to me morally neutral, but that doesn't matter because Spotify is not trying to be a dumb pipe. This is about podcasting, so let's stick with that. We already have/had a dumb pipe for podcasting. RSS. Podcasting is more free than most online media specifically for…

> This is an extreme position, and IMO unrealistic. We're watching an escalating conflict that could easily involve nuclear armed powers. Maybe we should try something extreme that doesn't involve asking Spotify to escalate the situation further? Heaven help us, now is the time to be de-escalating rather than throwing more sticks and stones at Russia that do nothing but annoy people.

I don't see how this relates to my comment. Where did I imply that spotify should escalate, or do anything for that matter?

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

#80

Post by tough » Sun, Mar 06, 2022, 2:33 PM UTC

reikonomusha wrote: post #44

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…

This happens also in catalonia (Spain) where I'm from.

Internet has made the breach greater, we might have great catalan poets from centuries ago, and a rich culture and history, but no youtuber will stream in catalan when in spanish they reach a 100x audience for example...

I'm glad I learnt it as my mother tongue though, being bilingual makes both learning other languages easier, and latin is like the wildcard of word roots for all of 'em (I can speak well English, Spanish, Catalan, and some French)

YMMV