Is Crimea In Russia? Internet Companies Have Different Answers

judgecorp (778838) writes "Three weeks after Russia asserted that Crimea is part of its territory, the social networks have a problem: how to categories their users from the region? Facebook and the largest Russian social network, Vkontakte, still say Crimeans are located in Ukraine, while other Russian social networks say they are Russians. Meanwhile, on Wikipedia, an edit war has resulted in Crimea being part of Russia, but shaded a different colour to signify the territory is disputed. Search engine Yandex is trying to cover both angles: its maps service gives a different answer, depending on which location you send your query from."

Re:Ukraine's borders were changed by use of force

[mi]

Kosovo comes to mind

Kosovo did not vote to join the US — nor any of the others, whose military was occupying the land.

Finally, would the British Empire accept a referendum by residents of it's colonies in the new world

As a matter of fact, India left the British empire without war. Look up Ghandi...

Those sorts of things are not achieved by throwing roses at your enemies.

We'll never know, what roses (or stones) Crimeans would've thrown at Kyiv on their own — had it been so clear-cut, Russia would not have had the need to occupy the peninsula before the referendum — nor would they have had the need to shut off Ukrainian TV rebroadcasts over it, replacing them with Putin's lying propaganda.

What we do know is that the fraudulent vote took place under the guns of the occupiers.

Re:Ukraine's borders were changed by use of force

[ageoffri]

The American Civil War was not a war over slavery. It was a war over Federal vs. State control. Slavery was an emotional issue used to by both sides as part of the their argument on control, but ultimately it was a secondary issue. If it was about slavery why did Lincoln "free" slaves in only the secessionist States?

Google also gives different answers

[swillden]

Google Maps shows Crimea as part of Russia to users from Russia, and part of Ukraine to the rest of the world.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2014/04/12/302337754/google-maps-displays-crimean-border-differently-in-russia-u-s

This is nothing new. As the article above mentions the name of the Arabian Gulf also changes depending on where you are, and mentions that there are many more cases. I believe Taiwan may be another. This approach is clearly a compromise, and like all compromises, makes no one really happy.