I really don’t want my colleagues to regret their choice.” An appeal from a culture critic who understands nothing about IT but admires Meduza’s tech department

“I really don’t want my colleagues to regret their choice.” An appeal from a culture critic who understands nothing about IT but admires Meduza’s tech department

Hi, this is Anton Khitrov. You may know me as Meduza’s culture critic and one of the hosts of the Telegram channel “Plot”. But today I want to say something about a side of Meduza’s work that I have absolutely nothing to do with and that I admire from the outside. This is the work of our technical department.

The tech department does many things, but above all, it works on bypassing blocks. In essence, this is a long, exhausting duel between two IT teams with fairly similar competencies: one does everything it can to make sure readers have no access to Meduza; the other does everything it can to make sure they do. It is not hard to guess which team has more resources.

Nevertheless, ours is still winning. By some miracle that is unfathomable to me, our app still works without a VPN (by the way, you should definitely download it; you can disguise the icon on your phone). And all our articles are available via the magic link , which also does not require a VPN.

As you understand, IT today is arguably the most privileged profession in the world. If you are a journalist in exile, your options are, frankly, limited. If you are an IT specialist, there are already choices. At the very least, you can afford stability, for yourself and your family.

Knowing this perfectly well, the employees of our tech department choose to work at Meduza, which, first, has been designated an “undesirable organization” in Russia and, second, is highly vulnerable economically.

It seems to me that this choice deserves support. I really don’t want my colleagues in the tech department to ever regret it. I think you, too, would prefer to live in a world where career decisions are determined by values, and not only by the market. That is why I am asking you (yes, again) to help Meduza.

If you are reading us from outside Russia, please set up a monthly payment. It can be small; the main thing is that it be regular. Thank you so much.

@meduzalive