[litiholofan]

I use yandex over google/bing. Works well for western censored content - however it does have a clear disinfo bent for english language searches. I still prefer it over google simply because it returns results like google used to in 2010 or so lol. Give it a go, you'll see what I mean.

[slaw]

I use Yandex sometimes for the same reasons, it is like Google from 2010, image search still works and old personal websites are still indexed. Is Yandex still Russian company or is it detached from Russia like Jetbrains and Telegram?

[itwillnotbeasy]

They never released any official statements condemning the war or leaving russia, none of their services were shut down there, and they still actively hiring new people in russia. Yandex services is also widely known for spreading pro-war propaganda, disinformation and fakes while censoring opposition media: https://meduza.io/feature/2023/01/30/yandeks-blokiroval-izob...,

https://meduza.io/news/2022/03/01/yandeks-segodnya-klyuchevo...

[smsm42]

Yandex used to pretend they are a global company (even had an office in Silicon Valley) but in 2022 this came to an end, as you cannot run business in both Russia and civilized world at the same time. So, Yandex is now Russian and thus controlled by the same thugs that control everything else there.

[ROTMetro]

Yandex had it's parent company which was headquartered in the Netherlands removed from operations and instead a new company headed by Aleksei Kudrin, a longtime confidant of President Vladimir Putin was put in charge.

[slaw]

> Volozh plans to separate the business of unmanned vehicles into a separate structure and develop it in Europe. The rest of Yandex will remain in Russia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexei_Kudrin

[kspacewalk2]

>Works well for western censored content

Not sure if that's what you mean, but Yandex is great for piracy and otherwise illegal content.

[somenameforme]

Yandex feels like a relatively simple text search with results from a large number of sources, kind of like Google from ~15 years ago. Modern Google instead feels like it gives you what it thinks you "actually" want, with an extreme preference to push you towards a very limited number of heavily weighted sources.

A simple example would be a search for 'russia usa war'. It's the sort of search that's REALLY annoying using something like Google for because, predictably, it gave me nothing but results about Ukraine from large US media outlets. Yandex gave me this [1] pretty informative Wiki entry as the #1 result, and then three pages describing a hypothetical Russia USA war including this [2] interesting looking video (and channel) on YouTube.

Continuing on further down the results you get ever more interesting things like this [3] that suggests Russia was involved in the US Civil War, on the side of the Union! As is always the case for anything, just because it's published - doesn't mean its true. But in this case it does seem to be, which is something I had no clue of even as a history fan! So I just had a TIL in "my" domain, while spending 5 minutes writing this post (and another 30 exploring Russian involvement in the US Civil War). That's why it rocks. Basically it kind of makes the internet feel like the internet again. And that's nice.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_during_the_Russo...

[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woD6RYptp58

[3] - https://www.stolenhistory.org/articles/1863-russian-involvem...

[ROTMetro]

Also great for casual racism.

https://www.itpro.com/security/data-breaches/369966/yandex-d...

This is sadly probably a draw for a lot of 'Russian is the only country maintaining traditional western values' types.

[smsm42]

If you live in the west, FSB having all your data probably doesn't matter, they have more urgent issues that you. If you live next door to Russia and have Russian troops stationed in part of your county occupied by Russia-supported bandits, your calculus may be a bit different.

[mistrial9]

> FSB having all your data probably doesn't matter

says who?

[zajio1am]

It definitely has much better image search than Google.

[randomname93857]

yandex and RT are the top of rus disinformation and anti-west/divisive content.

[litiholofan]

I've experienced more divisive content from western media itself than overt anti-west stuff from RT or yandex lmao.

[thiscatis]

Feel free to move to Russia if you don’t live there already and you’ll no longer have to worry about being exposed to western media!

[scared333]

This is underrated comment. And by looking at the knee-jerk reactions from accounts with 0-10 karma, might just be right on the money.

For me, having moved from the US to eastern Europe has been eye opening in this regard. Based on somewhat shallow sampling of parents of our kids classmates in $$$ IB school, everyone but one seem to be vocal about the fact that everything in the west is from the 'ass'. I admit that it has crossed my mind more than once that if you really feel so strongly this way, or are upset that people don't want to speak russian with you, then why are you still here and not on your way back already?

[klwrth]

I thought that moving to another country is a multi-variable problem, but apparently it can be reduced to a single variable problem.

[jurimasa]

Calm down, captain America. Chill. It's just an opinion and it was not rude.

[foverzar]

Oh please, unless you are a complete luddite, you'll get constantly bombarded by it.

[smsm42]

Russia has a long standing tradition of expelling dissenters from the country (if murdering them proves inconvenient for some reason). I guess some in the West want to culturally appropriate this tradition. I'd prefer restoring freedom of speech, tbh.

[lockhouse]

The parent of your comment brings up a valid point though.

The Western media pushing divisive narratives is a major problem, that is already starting to tear apart the social fabric of Western society. I don't know what the solution is, but it sure isn't "herr durr, move to Russia!"

You understand that a cartel of traditional and social media companies worked with the FBI and intelligence agencies to push a false narrative (the fake Steele dossier, paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign) and to suppress a major story about corruption by a Presidential candidate (Hunter Biden's laptop), both of which are straight up election interference. Even if you're a Democrat or a never-Trumper this should outrage you.

[osterbit2]

I just want to point out that some of the statements in your comment seem to be presented as facts when they are actually heavily disputed.

> "a cartel of traditional and social media companies worked with the FBI and intelligence agencies to push a false narrative (the fake Steele dossier, paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign)"

- while there are differing opinions on the veracity of this claim, it's important to consider the potential implications if it were true. If it were true, it would suggest that the President was compromised and had a conflict of interest between his personal vs the national interest, which is a serious concern.

- Additionally, there are many other instances where the President's conflicts of interest have been on display, such as his actions in Helsinki and his use of the presidency to enrich himself and his associates.

> "and to suppress a major story about corruption by a Presidential candidate (Hunter Biden's laptop)"

- It's worth noting that this claim was heavily promoted by the Trump campaign and lacked substantial evidence.

- And even if the worst version of these claims were true, they would be minor in comparison to other serious allegations against the former President, such as the Zelensky quid pro quo and the use of taxpayer dollars to benefit his businesses.

-- (I'd also add to the broader discussion that)

- While it's true that Western media has made mistakes and increased the spread of divisive content, the narratives about China and Russia are often rooted in solid ideological (or at least mostly self-consistent) principles, such as anti-authoritarianism and free speech.

- The real issue with our media, in my opinion, is its role in amplifying domestic right vs. left divisiveness, which weakens the United States in the world, and is tearing our society apart.

[smsm42]

The fact the FB and twitter worked with intelligence and politicians to suppress dissent is not some opinion, it's a documented confirmed fact. Denying the facts is not "opinion" , it's just lying. Same for Hunter laptop BTW- they had the ultimate evidence, the laptop itself. FBI had it, and lied about it. That's a fact. We didn't know it's a fact back in 2020, but now we do. So let's not pretend as there are some matters of opinion here - there are facts, and there are lies.

[kelipso]

> the narratives about China and Russia are often rooted in solid ideological (or at least mostly self-consistent) principles, such as anti-authoritarianism and free speech.

Please. It's rooted in competition and antipathy, us vs. them. Let's not kid ourselves.

[lockhouse]

What I stated is true.

The Dossier is a fake, and it was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign. The FBI also reached an agreement to pay Cristopher Steele $1 million to continue work on the dossier. Apparently this deal was scrapped and the payment never went through, but again, this is pretty disturbing that it went that far.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/25/us/politics/steele-dossie...

Also, the Hunter Biden laptop has been confirmed to be authentic and not Russian disinformation. The story was originally broken by the NY Post, but it was heavily suppressed by other media outlets and the NY Post’s social media accounts were blocked, as were those of pretty much anyone that attempted to share the story. The Intelligence community worked pretty much in lockstep to discredit the laptop as Russian disinformation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden_laptop_controvers...

(Yes, I know Wikipedia, but the only sources that really reported on it are Conservative-leaning media outlets like NY Post, Fox News, and Daily Wire, so I thought Wikipedia would be considered a bit more neutral.)

[randomname93857]

> I've experienced more divisive content from western media itself than overt anti-west stuff from RT or yandex lmao. there is enough of media in the west that is in partially/wholly owned or heavily sponsored by rus and that transmit their propaganda or divisive narratives. All under disguise of free speech. And then someone may even blame that it's western media itself with their freedom of speech. how convenient.

[sam_lowry_]

Yandex is also a search engine, not just the now infamous Yandex News.

[egorfine]

Yandex search is vastly censored. See recent leaks for the list of the keywords they replace in search queries.

[foverzar]

By "replace" do you maybe mean "alias"?

In any case, the problem is that anything else is also censored. DuckDuckGo stopped indexing RuNet altogether and Google is... Google.

[itwillnotbeasy]

It's literally rewriting search queries to avoid showing putin in negative context, when people search for "khuilo" or "bunker grandpa", "main thief" etc.

https://twitter.com/romankulish/status/1620227618435125248/p... https://meduza.io/feature/2023/01/30/yandeks-blokiroval-izob...

[mynameisvlad]

Does the word “alias” somehow make the process kosher?

It is not the gotcha you think it is.

[foverzar]

Not sure I understand what you mean, what "process"?. There shouldn't be any "gotchas" unless you are naive about how public service search engines operate.

[egorfine]

Replace, alias or add negative prompts. Multiple ways of converting one prompt to the other.

[sam_lowry_]

Sure, but how often do you search for "old fart" and expect to see Putin?

OTOH, their image search is way better than google's.

[egorfine]

> for "old fart" and expect to see Putin?

Living in Ukraine, I would love for the world to never see Putin again.

OTOH, I have nothing but tremendous respect for the engineers of the original Yandex. It's hard to overestimate how much they did for the russian-speaking world. I mean, they have basically invented practical stemming for Russian, Ukrainian and other close languages.

[sam_lowry_]

> they have basically invented practical stemming for Russian

Living in Ukraine does not make you less factually wrong. They stood on the shoulders of Sergei Starostin and Andrey Zaliznyak. The whole field of Russian Computational Linguistics owes to these two people and their faceless students. Not just Yandex Search.

[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

"old fart" has never been associated with Putin, in any language. If, however, you Yandex "bald dwarf" in Russian, you will immediately arrive at the desired result :) if you are outside of Russia. Not sure what happens inside, for some reason my VPN provider doesn't have Russian servers.

[foverzar]

Yandex sold off the news to VK (ex Mail.Ru) some time ago. Along with Zen blogging platform.

[ROTMetro]

Yandex search operations control was transferred to a new company after the war with the new board headed by Aleksei Kudrin, a longtime confidant of President Vladimir Putin.

[smsm42]

"Divisive" is a slur for dissent, so I'd avoid leaning on it too readily. That said, RT et al are a pile of state propaganda shit peppered on top with selected western dissenters to make it look like they are a legit alternative. Eating a pile of shit just to feel that peppery taste banned from PC media is not something I'd personally enjoy doing, but to each their own I guess.

[throw_away1525]

Maybe in English, but you have no idea how deep the rabbit hole goes. My Eastern European in-laws are hooked on Russian propaganda/disinfo and its all delivered to them in their language or Russian and its not coming from RT.

Having said that, I always chuckle at Americans who are so suspicious of RT given that they platform people like Cornell West and Chris Hedges who are absolutely blacklisted in western media.

I have no idea what the point of this comment is, other than everything sucks. :sigh:

[StanislavPetrov]

>Having said that, I always chuckle at Americans who are so suspicious of RT given that they platform people like Cornell West and Chris Hedges who are absolutely blacklisted in western media.

Virtually everyone with any remotely anti-war view is completely blacklisted from corporate Western media, which is basically the propaganda arm of the DC blob. This is not an endorsement of RT or non-Western media (which is riddled with their own biases), simply a statement of objective fact. The purpose is always the same, to form a consensus view that if you are not gung ho for attacking (insert current foreign bad guy here), then you are either secretly sympathetic to (current foreign bad guy) or somehow a disloyal American. It is quite an effective propaganda strategy. If you are an older person, like myself, and against all foreign wars regardless of the rationale offered by the war machine, you were first "Pro Saddam" in the early 90s. Then you were "Pro Milosevic" a few years later. You then became "Pro Saddam" again in the early 2000s before becoming "Pro Gaddafi" and "Pro Assad" a decade later. You are now "Pro Putin". Because you cannot simply be "anti-war" - it is a position that the people in power simply cannot afford to let become legitimate, as it obstructs the primary of agenda of the DC war machine.

[randomname93857]

I've been like you good part of my life. Until very recently, when it hit people close to me. Fsck pootin, he's getting more and more insane. he won't stop till he's punched into his face such that his neck is broken.

[rsynnott]

> and its all delivered to them in their language or Russian and its not coming from RT.

Yep, RT is aimed primarily at the "traditional" West (ie the US and Western Europe). Russia has other propaganda organs aimed more squarely at the former Eastern Bloc.

[Freak_NL]

> rus disinformation

Specifically Russian disinformation. 'Rus' is a much more neutral term which refers to the shared heritage of the Belarusian, Russian, and Ukrainian people.

[SSLy]

And a few not widely recognized nations squeezed between those.

[zmgsabst]

Oh no, a country we’re at war with produces content advancing their viewpoint and fomenting divisions!

The horror!

I know US media, like Voice of America, would never do something like that.

/s — the pearl clutching about things the US does because Russians is bigotry; the world isn’t a better place due to hating a certain ethnicity

[mynameisvlad]

Whataboutism is not a great look on anyone.

[foverzar]

> Whataboutism

Literally "don't dismiss my non-relevant hypocrisy".

Cheap rhetorical tricks aren't really a great look either.

[mynameisvlad]

The entirety of the comment is saying:

A. It’s ok because war

B. Voice of America does it so it’s ok

That is, quite plainly, whataboutism. There is no substance in the comment beyond “others do it too so it’s ok for Russians to as well and if you think otherwise, well look at these others”

I know it’s hard for you to see whataboutism when your comeback to Yandex being censored was “In any case, the problem is that anything else is also censored.” but try harder.

[woooooo]

Taxonomy is the lowest form of thought.

Either it's an outrage for MSFT to do business with warmongering countries, or it isn't. Saying we only care about Russian aggressions while ignoring our own is just jingoism.

[somenameforme]

I read his post as, "Mainstream news outlets within countries tend to be biased towards the interests of that country." I think that's a more good faith interpretation, and leads to a sort of water is wet type observation. That said I do think he more or less self-hijacked his own post by specifically naming Voice of America which is practically begging for your claims.

[bigger_inside]

exactly. "whataboutism" is nothing more than "how dare you not let me force you to talk about/deride what -I- want to talk about/deride, and on top of it, you do it by pointing out what a blatant hypocrite I am in my rant!". The cheapest of cheap comebacks.