If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
OP in the linked thread wanted to boycott Russia and Russian businesses. The “context” is that Kagi gives money to Yandex.
The answer from them : we are unimpressed by world politics.
Man… they are on my short list now.
For me it's not a big factor though. Yes the war is terrible but that's a point I can't use anything American either because of Iran and Gaza.
"The moment 'politics' becomes a factor in search results is the moment I stop working on a search engine."
I'm having a very hard time equating what's happening in Ukraine to "politics", as if we're talking about the next election or something...
"Yandex represents about 2% of our total costs and is only one of dozens of sources we use."
So it should be easy to cut then. It's literally an argument for removing it, not for keeping it. God.
But I do not see in the slightest how boycotting Kagi, or any other company who technically does business with some entity in Russia, helps the Ukrainians. Avoiding money to their businesses directly involved in the war efforts (arms, etc)? Sure, I get that. But yandex is only involved in the sense that the entire Russian economy is in some technical sense involved. I don't believe in punishing random Russians or Russian companies for the actions of their authoritarian, despotic government.
And to whatever extent it would have a miniscule impact, I believe that the impact it has on pushing tech companies more broadly towards user-first and user-aligned behavior far outweighs that. That isn't to say that that goal is more important than Ukrainians winning the war, it's not, or even very close, but the magnitude of difference more than balances the importance of the cause. Furthermore, the way we as westerners can actually make a difference is telling our politicians that we stand with Ukraine. A single phone call or letter to your representative would MASSIVELY outweigh a subscription to Kagi. }
So have you messaged your representative? If not, then I find this performative, and in either case, I am highly skeptical that it makes any practical difference.
As always, I'm open to having my mind changed.
-edit- And even if it did (again: doesn't), there is nothing contradictory in being willing to having my mind changed, even if I think one particular person is arguing in bad faith. Other people exist. I am always open to being wrong. Maybe someone else, who is arguing in good faith, could convince me. Taking potshots that add nothing to the conversation however, will not convince me.
Most of us have the comfort of living in a place where bombs and missiles do not fall on our heads. It's a very privileged position.
But not all of us. Some of us live in a country that has been attacked and the civilian population there is being bombarded on a regular basis by an aggressor country. The natural reaction is to stop funneling money to that aggressor country.
That's not "political".
"War is the continuation of politics by other means" - Carl von Clausewitz
Truth is the first victim of any war.
You should be able to remember China invading other places historically. Recently, of course, China doesn't compare to Russia or the US in terms of direct conflict. On the other hand, they're the country that is the most vocal about an imminent occupation.
> should be able to remember China invading other places historically
Can you help me out by clarifying the time and the country they invaded? I remember China being constantly invaded by others, hence the building of the Great Wall of China. They also had a navy at some point exploring the world, but then stopped and never really colonized any place as far as I know. Of course, I don't remember the entire history of China by heart, so which place did they invade and when?
Deaths in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: ~600,000 Total deaths in Israel-Palestine conflict since 1948: ~200,000. So Ukraine is definitely bloodier.
The area occupied by Russia in Ukraine is 20x the size of Gaza + the West Bank, and is 5 times the size of Israel itself.
Russia is 775x the size of Israel, so unlike Israel-Palestine fighting over a small piece of territory to live on, Russia’s war is far more pointless.
How many billions of dollars has the USA given to Russia since starting the war?
If a country goes into a neighboring country and starts killing people there, the natural reaction from a civilized planet would be to, at the very least, ostracize the aggressor. It should never pay to invade other countries. Invading other countries should be an obvious path to a total destruction of domestic economy and prospects for the future.
In other words, it doesn't matter if your money paid to Yandex goes directly towards bombs and drones (it actually does, if you look at the ownership structure). What matters Russian economy as a whole.
Time and place for every tech/use case. When I’m in the mood for reading long pieces, i do that deliberately.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email hn@ycombinator.com and give us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future. They're here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.