Should Tech Stay or Go in Russia?

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The international business community is leaving Russia. Tech companies like Apple and Facebook are open for business there.

Energy giants decided to abandon projects to dig up oil and gas in Ukraine after Russia invaded the country. They said that they would stop making and selling cars in Russia. Russia has largely been left out of the global financial system. British satellites will not be riding on Russian rockets, and Formula 1 racecars will not be zooming around Sochi as planned.

Russians are still using their phones, but they are also using messaging services like Telegram and WhatsApp. The end of the workweek has made social media useless for some people. The Russian government has been slowing internet speeds, not because of anything the companies did.

The global tech powers have 10 days to make a decision. Stay or go?

If Russia is treated as a pariah and cut off from 21st-century digital life, are Ukraine and global democracy better served?

The decision shows that a few corporate digital powers have become power brokers in the Middle East. It is a call to action for the United Nations, the heads of central banks, and the chief executives of Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft when tanks begin to roll.

The Arab Spring movements in the early 2010s were one of the earliest inklings of this power. In Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, activists used social media sites and mobile phones to organize their street campaigns.

An Egyptian-born tech worker created a Facebook page to honor a man who was beaten to death by Egyptian police. It was a factor in the huge rallies in Cairo. A man in Tunisia broadcast his location in the app Foursquare when he was held by the government.

The instrument of political change was the collective might of citizens. The Arab Spring was a high point of tech optimism when it seemed as though the internet gave power to the people to disrupt corrupt institutions, and tech companies were on their side.

Tech companies have sometimes failed to devote the resources and care to stand up for people caught in conflict zones or trapped at the mercy of autocratic governments in the years since the citizen uprisings.

The United Nations concluded that the military had turned Facebook into a propaganda tool for genocide. Meta acknowledged that it didn't do enough to prevent its site from being abused to inciting violence. The Philippines, Saudi Arabia, and other countries have used social media to intimidate and malign their critics.

In Russia, two-thirds or more of internet-connected people use the internet to communicate. Insider Intelligence says that Telegram andInstagram are common.

Russian government critics, including the jailed opposition politician, have turned to social media. Last year, Mr. Navalny's allies criticized Apple and Google for complying with government demands to take down an app meant to coordinate protest voting in Russian elections.

People close to those companies said that they had little choice but to comply with Russian authorities who claimed the app was illegal.

The invasion of Ukraine made it easier for tech companies to take sides. Russia has been treated as a hostile aggressor by the international community.

In other conflict zones, the internet companies have been caught with few staff who speak the language, but most have teams who are able to work in Ukrainian and Russian.

Locals in the Ukranian are being told to secure their accounts to protect themselves from Russian threats. There were concerns that showing where people were gathering could create safety risks.

Some Ukrainian officials want foreign tech companies to do more. They want companies to stop doing business in Russia. Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine's minister of digital transformation, has been using his social media accounts to shame tech companies to stop or limit their services in Russia. Mr. Fedorov has said that doing so might cause Russians to rebel against their government.

He wrote a letter to Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, saying that modern technology is the best answer to the tanks and other weapons.

Apple and Microsoft have stopped selling their products in Russia. The Washington Post reported on Friday that Cogent Communications, a U.S. company that provides essential plumbing for the internet, planned to sever relations with Russian customers. The decision could make it more difficult for Russians to use the internet.

Russia's internet regulator demanded that the company stop what it said were commercial messages that misled citizens about the invasion.

David Kaye, a law professor and a former United Nations special rapporteur on free expression, said that it would be a mistake for tech companies to completely quit Russia at the moment.

Mr. Kaye said that the harm of pro-Kremlin propaganda that is circulating online in Russia was relatively minor compared with the productive ways that Russian citizens, activists and journalists were using.

These technologies help expose Russians to information that is different from the state narrative of the war. Ukrainians are using social media to ridicule Russian troops and share safety information. The Russian government websites have been flooded by Ukrainian volunteers. For a time, Russians looking up Moscow landmarks in the Maps section of the internet were bombarded with photos of bombed homes and injured civilians.

Mr. Kaye said that he was sympathetic with the idea that the U.S. and international companies should resist engagement with Russia.

Nothing is easy in war, and Mr. Kaye said we need to think it through.

There is a risk that companies will be puppets of the West if the U.S. or European governments support Russia. Russian dissidents and journalists might be hurt by that.

Staying could put employees in harm's way. Russia is one of the countries that has established landing laws that make local employees of foreign companies more vulnerable to fines, arrests or other punishments if they don't comply with government demands. It may be the Kremlin's choice, not Silicon Valley executives, if digital service stays or goes.

For decades, the U.S. technology industry has described what it does as a more efficient and enlightened form of American capitalism. Executives have used those qualities to argue for more hands off government regulation and taxation.

Tech companies got tax breaks for their research and development spending. The internet has no sovereignty over it, according to an influential manifesto by John Perry Barlow. In his testimony to Congress, he said that putting guardrails on U.S. tech would allow Chinese tech companies to take over the world. How that might happen was never explained.

The normal rules should not apply to them. Tech companies are being treated as a special type of corporation. Global information and communication services are not like cars or barrels of oil. The argument is better because of war.

• The Russian invasion threatens the lives and jobs of the large technology work force of Ukraine, which is used globally by popular video games, big banks and car manufacturers. It is possible that subscriptions may be required.

• The stream of war footage in the short video app has been an important way for outsiders to see and understand what is happening in Ukraine. It is difficult to separate truth from fiction in war because of TikTok's immediacy, reach and computer-generated sorting. A subscription is required.

  An online video of Zhenya Perepelitsa, a Ukrainian soldier, reading from a Persian love poem struck a nerve with Iranians and Ukrainians.

• More than one million smart watches were recalled by the internet-connected gadgets company. More than 100 burn injuries were caused by overheating batteries in the Ionic watches.

Zaila was a star at the New Orleans event. She is just as good on a float as she is on a basketball court.

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