Tell HN: Mailchimp locked my account because I'm Russian

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30695453

by f311a • 4 years ago

40 44 4 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Mailchimp just locked my account and I can't even download my data and subscribers. I used it for a small tech blog.

I respect their opinion and do not support the war, but locking out data is just insane. I know there are a lot of independent Russian journalists and activists who use Mailchimp and now we have even less freedom of speech inside the country.

Thanks Mailchimp.

AndrewKemendo• 4 years ago

Mailchimp is a US company and thus bound to US law, which includes economic sanctions.

This is likely Mailchimp complying with those sanctions.

f311a2• 4 years ago

There are no sanctions (yet) that target every citizen.

bryan_w• 4 years ago

And it's only going to get worse

Unless you take to the streets. They can't arrest you all (or maybe they can, idk)

unmole9• 4 years ago

Unless you take to the streets.

I don't understand why keyboard warriors in liberal democracies seem to think that Putin is going to be toppled by street protests. As terrible as Putin is, he is objectively less terrible than Stalin. Yet, nobody was able to topple him.

sterlind• 4 years ago

Arab Spring was street protests. results varied widely from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria, but in all cases protests led to massive change.

jim-jim-jim• 4 years ago

Unless you take to the streets. They can't arrest you all.

This is really out of touch coming from childless Western men with email jobs. Revolutionary ideas guys.

TheAlchemist• 4 years ago

As an Eastern European, I disagree. This guy is right. It has been done before (Solidarnosc) and it can be done again.

DoItToMe81• 4 years ago

Russia is a dictatorship. The true constituents of Russia, the military, the oligarchs, all for now seem to unconditionally support Putin. Publicly demonstrating in a country known for violently ending public demonstrations is only going to get people needlessly killed. There are many other ways to dissent.

dragonwriter• 4 years ago

Publicly demonstrating in a country known for violently ending public demonstrations is only going to get people needlessly killed.

Public activism (well targeted) is how you turn those things, particularly the military rank-and-file.

I mean, it's not like the same thing wasn't true of the Tsarist regime when the various forces opposed to it started demonstrating.

Tabular-Iceberg2• 4 years ago

The question is whether "you all" actually feel strongly about getting rid of Putin, or even having relations with the west.

When Jacob Zuma was jailed, people went on pro-corruption riots. Pro-corruption, not anti-corruption. It's possible the same thing will happen in Russia if Putin is toppled too. Protesters may not only have to deal with the police, they might also have to deal with an angry pro-Putin lynch mob.

yokoprime• 4 years ago

Your government did this to you, not mailchimp, not «the west». As long as Putin prioritizes invading sovereign countries for territorial gain, you just have to suck it up.

unmole9• 4 years ago

Putin had bombs planted in Russian cities, had his opponents jailed and assassinated and ordered the bombardment of Chechen, Syrian and Ukranian cities. But I'm pretty sure he didn't lock anyone out of their MailChimp account.

ZeroGravitas3• 4 years ago

Your list are all things that Putin ordered. Then the last thing is something that happened because of his orders.

Did Putin personally send millions of refugees out of Ukraine? No, but he ordered the invasion and bombardment. And that's what lead to it happening.

Did Putin personally supply Ukraine with German defensive weaponry? Ditto.

Did Putin personally do whatever blowback occurs? Ditto.

1_player• 4 years ago

Yes, he wouldn't do anything as bad as locking anyone out of their Mailchimp account.

sheinsheish• 4 years ago

Can’t you contact them and try to get a copy of your data ?

sonicggg• 4 years ago

I did not see any corporate announcement from Mailchimp regarding enforcement of sanctions. Ate you a Russian living in Russia?

f311a2• 4 years ago

Here the e-mail I got:

     Hello,
     
     As part of Intuit, Mailchimp is no longer supporting accounts based in Russia. This account is now suspended, and it will be necessary that you find a new vendor.
     
     If you believe that your account has been disabled in error, you may reply to this email. You will be asked to submit information demonstrating that your Mailchimp account complies with regulatory requirements and/or corporate policies.
     
     We join the millions around the world calling for a quick and peaceful resolution to the war. To find out more about Intuit’s position please click here.
     
     – Mailchimp

I think all Russians got it, because there are a lot of complains.

indemnity• 4 years ago

Yes, well, Ukrainians are dying, when that stops maybe your inconveniences can too.

unmole9• 4 years ago

What you're saying is you'll be fine with getting cancelled because of whatever your government does?

axiosgunnar2• 4 years ago

This attempted generalization is a whataboutism.

Very few governments initiate wars.

It‘s only in this specific and utterly exceptional situation that yes, the citizen's should be cancelled because their government started a war and sanctioning them is our only less-than-WW3 option.

throwawaybutwhy• 4 years ago

Sorry for your loss, but you have to suck it up. This is hybrid warfare, and your country is at a kinda sorta war with the US. The 'good news' is your tech blog is going to be canceled anyway once the readers find out you're Russian.

As a side note, it looks like Russian 'below-the-threshold' invasion of 2014 significantly altered American strategy and made it more versatile. We'll just have to wait and see if it changes the end game, though.

pvaldes2• 4 years ago

The window opportunity of protesting in the streets has been closed. Who "wins" the war now will not change the fact that Ukraine will be rebuilt with your money. The bill is huge yet and keeps growing each day.

Many young Russians are quitting the country. Probably the safest solution now that your president has going so mentally unstable as to equal a maternity full of women and newborn with a nazis den.

Russia can just aim for a pyrrhic victory. Then will suffer a hard recession and faces a very bleak future.

You have a bigger problem that Mailchimp access. If you can, quit the country.

Tabular-Iceberg2• 4 years ago

Since we have an actual Russian in the thread, it would be interesting to have some light shed on this.

One analysis I keep hearing is that economic collapse means that they will inevitably submit to western liberal democracy because living in a stone age economy with no proverbial coke or blue jeans is just too intolerable for people.

The other analysis is that most Russians live quite independently of the economy, have never heard of any American chimpanzees delivering mail, have no interest in any western luxuries, and are happy as long as they can hear soothing messages from the state media about their greatness, and get drunk off the gourd on cheap vodka (which will practically be free if nobody buys Russian grain anymore).

If the former is true, obviously pile on as many sanctions as possible. But if the latter is true, sanctions could make Russia less likely to change, not more. You'd want to get more people hooked on western goods, services and culture. I'm sure both groups of people exist concurrently, since Russia is anything but homogenous. But without actually living on the inside for a long time it's hard to tell which way the bias leans. And then there's the question of how strong the bias would need to be to justify one course of actions over the other.

pvaldes2• 4 years ago

economic collapse means that they will inevitably submit to western liberal democracy

Not, economic collapse means that Russia will became a serf from China.

Coca cola, blue jeans and jewels are easily replaceable; Russia not having anymore Intel CPUs, or Taiwanese chips for fixing computers, or even neon gas required to make their own chips will not be so funny.

And by Computers I mean all that is basically a computer now: cars, trains, machine, TV, phones, appliances... the "stone age" one is a good metaphor. Everything can be smuggled, is just more expensive, but "Smart" products can easily be redesigned to refuse to work inside Russian frontiers, for example.

Of course Russia could buy (almost) everything from China instead, paying with raw materials or asking China to buy all things in their name (Many African countries are doing exactly that now), but then China will write the price. Russia will not have much leverage to negotiate in that position.

smspillaz• 4 years ago

now we have even less freedom of speech inside the country.

Did anybody read this part?

I see a lot of comments along the lines of "well we're at war with you" or "you'll get your access back once Ukraine stops being bombed", with the justification that anyone living in Russia has the duty to "rise up" and stop the war locally. To be these responses seem thoroughly un-nuanced and flippant. Its absolutely true that to stop the war, you need to get rid of Putin, but its not clear that there's a connection between dropping clients and getting rid of Putin. In fact this is probably counterproductive and strengthen's Putin's grip on the population even further.

The usual mechanism given is "if we annoy the people enough, they'll rise up on the streets and demand change". First, this assumes that if you annoy people, they'll transfer their anger to the regime. This is only true for a subgroup of affected people; the rest will just be angry at the sanctioning party and direct their anger through the regime into even stronger pro-war support. But for the people who might be motivated to protest, its not clear whether or not their actions will be effective. Because we're talking about a dictatorship, individual action carries both high personal risk and is unlikely to be very effective. There are exceptions to this rule, for example, Marina Ovsyannikova, but ordinary people going to the streets and holding up signs is only likely to end up with more people in jail (and potentially more people conscripted into the army). There is also the objection that mass-protest will make a difference, which, perhaps it will, but that requires co-ordination and a critical mass.

The second thing to say here (relevant to what I quoted from OP) is that Mailchimp is infrastructure which is in use by the local resistance. By blanket cutting-off Russia, you're also hindering the local resistance as well. If one wants to take a principled stand, its probably fine to cut off regular businesses that have nothing to do with it (with the caveat that you might just make them angry at you), but throwing out the baby with the bathwater and cutting off the local resistance is just completely counterproductive. Due to the inability to make payments outside the country, their only options for replacement infrastructure are local, which are more likely to be under state influence and censorship. So now their only options are to shut down and stop organizing the resistance to the regime, or engage in self-censorship, which might as well just be shutting down.

demetrius• 4 years ago

Do you have an option of transferring the ownership to someone out of Russia? Maybe even find a co-author for the blog

I don't know what's the Mailchimp policy on this, but that's a path I would try. Of course, that would require a lot of correspondence with the support and finding an actual person outside of Russia whom you trust.

nagasadhu• 4 years ago

Feel sorry for you mate. But citizens of the world have to put up with American hegemony and the hubris of having better military weapons and the petro dollar. You may not find much empathy by appealing to moral scruples on social media.

nikolqy• 4 years ago

Pretty nasty. Welcome to the big tech tyrants! Really, you’re paying too much for mail anyways. Oracle cloud email delivery is a mere $0.085/1,000 emails sent. For sure a much better deal than any other email delivery provider. Oh, you’ll also pay $0.0085/GB of data transferred. That’s $8.50 per 1 TB. Best deal in the world.

Tell HN: Mailchimp locked my account because I'm Russian

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