No. Not fuck Russians as a blanket policy. The Russian government is full of corrupt and evil bastards, but it’s certain that most Russians are the same as most other citizens; They just want to go about their business.
I’m in favor of blocking the Russian accounts, they’re probably mostly state actors. The ones that aren’t actively sabotaging the codebase are unfortunate causalities, but it’s better than the alternative.
Most Russians don’t have easy access to non-state propaganda media outlets. If they only have false information, they can’t be expected to form an educated opinion.
If you haven’t seen it, I recommend taking a look at a recent post from the NYT Magazine about a Russian defector. They also made a 5 part podcast miniseries told from his perspective. NYT recently put old podcast episodes behind the paywall, not sure how to access them elsewhere, but I’ll include a link to reference if you want to look it up.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/09/20/magazine/ukraine-russia-war-deserter.html
This is actually completely false.
Until very recently, both Youtube and telegram have been available censorship free. Almost every russian was able to access “non-state propaganda media outlets” in under ~10 seconds on their smartphones.
NYT times is bad source on russia. They routinely whitewash russian crimes. They often leverage russian opposition sources without any critical analysis.
It’s not difficult to find if you try just a little bit.
I’m really sad about this. There is a lot of computer science talent in Russia, and I’m very very upset that It Has Come To This.
But it very clearly has.
