[vasco]

> On Friday, sources confirmed on background that at least one of the U.S.-based companies implementing the restriction felt compelled to comply for fear that local staff could face legal action upon receipt of a takedown order from the Russian Federation.

Really making the world a better place. How hard would it be to have employees from outside the country make the app review, and shield local employees from this? These companies do what they want to do, and they didn't think this was a hill worth fighting for, which is sad.

[benque]

What would prevent Russian authorities from taking action against local employees anyway? The buck stops at the government. The only options for private companies in these type of situations are: comply or exit.

[vasco]

I don't think it has to escalate as aggressively as you're making it out to be, and yet exiting is an option as we saw from Google's reaction to China's demands. So here we're just seeing what things they consider bad enough and my comment is that it was sad this wasn't bad enough for them to put their foot down.

[csande17]

"Shield local employees from this" is the main hard part of this proposal. The Russian government does not especially care which part of the company Google claims is responsible for app review, and they will happily arrest/prosecute/murder any staff they can get their hands on if there's a chance it'll get then what they want.

[varjag]

It almost sounds as if operating in Russia is a bad idea.

[neonbones]

Yeah, that's an old story, but there were engineering offices of a few big US companies in Russian before. Almost all of them left in 2010x when they understood what was going on there. Same for Belarus, companies moved their offices to Ukraine and other Eastern European countries.

They want to market and engineers there, but they don't want to risk working in authoritative countries with batshit crazy wannabe emperors. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/12/google-closes-...

[paganel]

That is the definition of foreign power interference.

[lotusmars]

I wish there was a foreign power interference in Russia. At this point I will accept NATO intervention (will never happen though, West is just complicit with Putin).

[djjdjuuooo]

You can move to Afghanistan to see enjoy one.

[zo1]

Is Afghanistan the new Somalia yet?