Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

https://gist.github.com/avestura/ce2aa6e55dad783b1aba946161d5fef4

by avestura • 10 months ago

941 639 10 months ago

gist.github.com

It must be really frustrating be on the receiving end of sanctions. The ugly truth about sanctions is that they punish the people more than the aristocracy. But they're still better than wars.

barrenko• 10 months ago

The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.

And if your're someone sliding into nasty leadership / government situation you have to realize there will be a consequence to that and that the perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.

typpilol• 10 months ago

Cold hard truth. If Iranians don't support their government like is always said.. then....

ivan_gammel8• 10 months ago

It’s a stupid idea that does not work. People don’t do that because of sanctions.

totetsu• 10 months ago

So like .. ‘I%’

Then?

JumpCrisscross9• 10 months ago

point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership

This works about a third of the time [1].

What does is incentivising domestic policy changes. We saw that with the nuclear deal. But then Trump blew it up because Obama did it.

(On another level, sanctions degrade capability. If there is no room for peace, at least you can limit your adversary’s economy and thus martial production. If regime change randomly happens, you can use lifting sanctions to blow oxygen on the new government’s flame [2].)

[1] https://dl1.cuni.cz/pluginfile.php/863435/mod_resource/conte... Table 6.1, page 159

[2] https://the307.substack.com/p/how-sanctions-function-as-a-to...

fsloth• 10 months ago

”The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.”

Very easy to say. Quite hard to pull off. People in authoritarian countries have very little leverage and would like just to live fullfilling lives.

I’m not saying ”don’t do sanctions” but this mechanistic outcome is highly improbable.

”perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.”

Um - the most polite way of stating this is that this view of how political systems work is highly delusional at best.

Ruling party depends on _elite_ _compliance_.

sssilver• 10 months ago

Is the concept here that a government, which may not be oppressive enough to spark a domestic uprising (and might even be broadly accepted by the majority of its own citizens due to common moral values or other merits), should be destabilized by external forces to provoke discontent and shift blame onto the government?

cyberax• 10 months ago

The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.

Iranians had several mass uprisings that were suppressed by the military. And the top military and religious authorities in Iran have no problems whatsoever living well, even with all the sanctions.

Just like the Russian elites, btw. They can't visit France as easily anymore, but there's always Dubai available. That can't care less where your money comes from.

preisschild2• 10 months ago

It also makes it harder to build weapons for example. Ruzzians for example rely on western chips and other parts for their weapon systems and due to the sanctions they need to smuggle those parts, which makes it more expansive for them.

Al-Khwarizmi2• 10 months ago

The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.

That's the theory, but has it ever worked?

That something that never works (not even in cases where it has been going on for multiple generations, as in the case of Cuba or Iran) keeps being tried makes it impossible to believe that the intention is making it "work" in the sense you mean. The sanctions are just to sink those countries for political interest. Which in some cases makes sense (e.g. Russia, as it's invading Ukraine and sinking its economy can be a deterrent in that respect), but in others is definitely evil.

hks02• 10 months ago

No country should generally decide something for people of another country, but let's say it's a exceptional case and it's a war tactic, as a response to an external threat.

Then half a decade shows that point is not relevant or, the overthrowing is not the point at all.

I too wished the wolrd was that simple. But there are dictatorships, who kill, slaughter, coerce, ... and also all the international affairs from which those people are kept an outsider with zero say by the said government. I don't think we can reduce it to "it's people's fault".

don_esteban3• 10 months ago

"The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership."

No, that's for consumption by population of the sanctioning country. The people in the know know very well that that never works.

The point is for every other country in the world to see how much it hurts if you don't follow the wishes of USA. Classic mafia strategy.

The exception were the sanctions on Russia at the start of the Ukraine war. Those were unprecedented (including the freezing of the national bank assets and blocking of Swift) and it looks like the western powers really believed that those sanctions will cause economic collapse and regime change in Russia.

XorNot• 10 months ago

No it's also just to deny those countries resources to come after the rest of us.

We don't sell them weapons, and we try to limit dual-use technology from being freely available.

Defense tech uses a lot of open source software and commercially available software - letting a regime simply buy technological advantage it can't cultivate is a good way to lose that advantage and then also lose the culture which can create it.

t1E9mE7JTRjf3• 10 months ago

I suspect a reason for sanctions is that it allows the government applying them to look like they're doing something to their voters. It's an effective way of scoring points without spending any resources. They know they're ineffective, but they also know the general public doesn't know that. For instance the EU very publicly applying sanctions against Russia while with less fanfare continuing to give them billions for gas.

yawpitch4• 10 months ago

And if your're someone sliding into nasty leadership / government situation you have to realize there will be a consequence to that and that the perception of the ruling party can never be separated from the perception of the people.

Especially if you’ve just been dumb enough to re-elect that nasty leadership / government on behalf of (and at the behest of) the people who benefit off having that ruling party in office.

constantcrying4• 10 months ago

Telling people to throw their lives away to provoke a civil war is one of the nastiest rhetorical tricks you hear when people talk about oppressive regimes.

In basically every case a bad government is preferable to the destruction, chaos and death a civil war brings. "Just overthrow your government" is ridiculous plea.

sjapkee5• 10 months ago

The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.

Yeah, it will certainly make life better, works every time (no).

marcosdumay4• 10 months ago

The point is to get people in those contries to overthrow their leadership.

After the CIA and the US foreign policy had so much trouble overthrowing the old one and putting that one in place?

palmfacehn2• 10 months ago

From the article:

I read hackernews on a daily basis and I visit lots of different websites regularly. I am almost always on my VPN as I am internally firewalled by the government and externally shooed because of the sanctions, so I am probably missing some of these heart-warming messages:
>Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.
I actually do not blame the people who do this. I think there is a fundamental misconception that people think because "Islamic Republic" has the word "Republic" in it, it must be a government of people in charge.

Total war and total information war are the side effects of the Democracy meme. Everyone from a taxi driver to a professor is assumed to be a political actor. The rationale runs something like this, "because you have a vote, you are defacto responsible for the actions of your state and political classes. Vote harder next time."

Meanwhile the individuals involved never explicitly consented to be governed. Even if there were a meaningful democratic process, it doesn't follow that the individual could withdraw consent. Ironically one of the suggested avenues for withdrawing consent in a democracy is to refuse to vote.

adastra2212• 10 months ago

Countries with "Democratic" and "Republic" in their name rarely are.

vasco3• 10 months ago

Only way to widthraw consent in a democracy is moving to pay your taxes somewhere else.

randomNumber73• 10 months ago

The only real way to withdraw consent would be political violence.

The key upside of democracy imo is then that most people do not see a reason to use violence; They can vote and never need to withdraw consent that extremely.

gethly2• 10 months ago

Any business that goes political/activist should be written off by any of their customers - for ever.

kennywinker6• 10 months ago

Funny because i would write off any company doing business with russia. Every action is “political” because we exist in a context.

gethly2• 10 months ago

That is perfectly fine. You are the customer and you can choose whom you will give your business to. My point is that companies should not be doing it because they instantly cut their potential customer base by half with every single act of activism they do. They should be focusing on business and nothing else. Politics, activism, whatever you want to call it, should be solely in the hands of the individual, not the corporations, whose sole purpose to exist is to do business with every possible customer they can in order to turn a profit.

Additionally, companies might be political in ways I might not care. It might be simply a non-factor when deciding whether I give them business or not. But the sheer fact they are politically active, so to speak, and don' focus solely on providing the best services for the best prices with the highest quality, is the red flag that instantly makes me wary of doing business with them in the first place.

bibelo4• 10 months ago

How ironic is it that by pretending to promote freedom, some people actually do more harm than anything else, by having what is to me a racist view of people in other countries (ie all Iranian are the same and have the same political view as the head).

Do they not understand that, instead of helping these people connect to the outside world and improve their life and their country, they are actually increasing the poor conditions and helping the regimes they are fighting against?

dijit2• 10 months ago

Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US, and not everyone in Iran is Iranian (or even Arab); so sanctions are not “racist”, they’re levied against political leadership.

The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders.

Not sure if it has worked, but I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.

ivan_gammel8• 10 months ago

I am sure Russia is unhappy with the unrest that sanctions have caused.

The political situation in Russia is more stable now than before the war. Putin is certainly happy.

johnisgood3• 10 months ago

I think that idea sucks ass because it promotes violence at the very least. What would happen in the US were it to happen to them? I want to see the American population putting pressure on these so-called leaders. Same goes to EU. Same goes to UK.

As for sanctions:

Iran is not the only example in which sanctions have resulted in unintended consequences. Since 1970, unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. have achieved foreign policy goals in just about 13% of cases, according to one study. A recent Congressional Research report evaluating U.S. sanctions in Venezuela found that sanctions “exacerbated an ongoing economic and humanitarian crisis caused by government mismanagement and corruption that has promoted 7.7 million Venezuelans to flee.” U.S. sanctions also exacerbated humanitarian crises in North Korea, reported UNICEF, putting 60,000 vulnerable children at risk of starvation due to limited humanitarian aid.

https://washingtondc.jhu.edu/news/do-sanctions-actually-work...

Please evaluate the historical failure of sanctions. As someone else have mentioned, Putin is happy despite the sanctions, but everyone else is not. These sanctions (from US, EU, etc.) hurt the people, not the people in the Governments. Come on, for the current price of <include basic food that used to be cheap> I used to be able to buy at least 3-5x more BEFORE the sanctions. Talk about sanctions exacerbating economic crisis. They will never learn, I guess, unless intended, but if it is intended, then surely it goes against everything they claim to stand for, as someone else has already elaborated.

bibelo4• 10 months ago

You're mixing political sanctions and sanctions from private companies and paid-for services.

It's like your local bakery refusing to sell a donut to a random iranian guy.

tgma21• 10 months ago

Sanctions don’t apply to Iranians in the US

There is some nuance here. While some "sanctions" may not be applicable, the United States has a concept called deemed export, where exposing a non-US Person (~non-citizen with no green card) to technologies in the US, for example during the course of regular employment, can be problematic. Depending on the foreign citizen's nationality, the level of exposure that is deemed problematic can vary. For Iranian citizens, it is basically almost everything unless open-source. This is why all FANGs regularly apply for a deemed export license before commencing employment of foreign individuals with problematic nationalities.

sorushn4• 10 months ago

Sanctions don't apply to Iranians in the US

Sanctions absolutely do apply to Iranians (even dual citizens) anywhere in the world, albeit less intensively.

not everyone in Iran is Iranian

Swing and a miss. Sanctions are primarily against Iranian nationals, and extend to any non-Iranian who violated the sanctions. If you visit Iran as an American/Chinese/Antractican you don't automatically end up sanctioned.

The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders

And that makes it okay? Nuking civilians can also be a tactic to pressure the leaders into surrender. And nukes may take fewer lives than decades of intense sanctions.

tryauuum4• 10 months ago

The idea is to get the population to put pressure on the leaders.

is it true? I thought the idea is "harm enonomy of a country by not doing buisness with them".

yieldcrv• 10 months ago

The OFAC sanctions list’s applicability should be limited to payment processors and direct payments in my opinion

All those software services rely on the payment processor to do business with the economically sanctioned users so they shouldn’t have done anything

INTPenis• 10 months ago

Iran has been under sanctions for a long time. I remember working for unnamed US server manufacturer back in 09 and we had a list of countries by our desks to remember if anyone ever called in from there, or even mentioned working there during the call.

ivan_gammel8• 10 months ago

The stupid thing about those indiscriminate sanctions is that it goes against the very values the West is pretending to defend. EU charter of Human Rights is explicit about condemning collective responsibility, universal declaration of human rights demands justice to be applied reasonably and individually, yet here we are: punishing people without trial.

Do those sanctions even work? North Korea still builds nuclear weapons, Cuba still has a communist government, Iran is still a theocratic regime. You don’t start revolution by trade embargo. You start it by sending more jeans and heavy metal records.

LoganDark• 10 months ago

I think the theory is that the powers that be will feel bad for their citizens or that the citizens will revolt. Neither of those happen in practice though.

Schnitz• 10 months ago

Sanctions work, but not in the way that is the common public perception. The expectation isn’t that Russia or whoever falls apart a few weeks after we lock them out of Visa payment rails or whatever. The reality is that the sanctions stifle economic growth and that effect is compounding. Even if sanctions only reduce growth by 1 percentage point, after ~19 years your economy is already 20% smaller than it would be without sanctions and that is measurable. From a national security perspective, it makes Russia a lot less concerning if their industrial output is 20% less. Now imagine trying to start a software business in Iran, the stifling effect is way higher than a measly percentage point. Note that I’m not making a moral judgement, I’m simply sharing my understanding of sanctions.

akho• 10 months ago

Now imagine trying to start a software business in Iran, the stifling effect is way higher than a measly percentage point.

Depriving Iranians of legal access to Western tools opens the market to locals. I suspect that the market is big enough to build a business.

It'difficult to assess gdp impact in this particular area. It's not really dependent on blockable imports.

ivan_gammel8• 10 months ago

From a national security perspective, it makes Russia a lot less concerning if their industrial output is 20% less

Russian military industrial output has significantly increased and more importantly they demonstrated the ability to scale it up very quickly. The economy has grown during the war - the effects of the sanctions may become painful in the long term only if they will stay for decades, which is unlikely.

reissbaker2• 10 months ago

Do those sanctions even work?

Well, you mentioned "North Korea still builds nuclear weapons," but didn't mention Iran having them. So, something worked. It wasn't 100% just sanctions... But the sanctions certainly hampered their ability to acquire effective air defense.

(The NK sanctions were too late — NK had already started nuclear weapons testing before the sanctions were levied.)

Off the top of my head: I don't think the USSR is still around, and it largely collapsed due to economic pressure; Libya abandoned its nuclear program due to sanctions; and apartheid in South Africa ended largely due to sanctions.

They don't always work, but I've never heard of jeans and heavy metal working either, as nice as that would be. Belarus has plenty of both, but Lukashenko's been in power since the 90s.

ivan_gammel8• 10 months ago

But the sanctions certainly hampered their ability to acquire effective air defense.

Effective air defense against military superpower (and they were effectively fighting against American technology) is something very hard to build, with or without sanctions. Ukraine is a good proof: Russia was denied air superiority using manned aircrafts but they still manage to inflict significant damage with missiles and drones.

I don't think the USSR is still around, and it largely collapsed due to economic pressure

It wasn’t external pressure at all. Soviet Union had everything to be self-sustainable (e.g. Russia and Ukraine have proven later that in agriculture it’s absolutely possible). They failed to execute transition to regulated market economy the way China did. Gorbachev thought democracy goes first (the entire Warsaw bloc collapsed thanks to “blue jeans” - KGB and Stasi feared Western culture the most, and the West was ready to send more of it).

tgma21• 10 months ago

The sad part about living in Iran from a technology perspective is you are often blocked from both sides. Often you have to circumvent the government's aggressive internal firewall and other times you will have to hide your IP from the service providers.

On the bright side, your average Iranian grandma can immediately work as a network engineer given the amount of experience she has with VPN protocols.

DanielHB2• 10 months ago

Oh boy, I remember the days you had to be a proper engineer to understand and set up VPNs. Like adblocking making this stuff popular just makes it less effective for people in-the-know.

Hilift• 10 months ago

Using a VPN doesn't prevent the Iranian authorities from detecting that you are using a VPN. It isn't a secure or safe alternative in Iran, particularly with the noisy way it is usually thrown together.

int_19h15• 10 months ago

Indeed, which is why things like V2LESS and Trojan exist (and people learn how to set them up and use them).

jr-14• 10 months ago

Imagine if your country was added to this block-list, and all your data is wiped. Is there nothing you can do at this point?

It feels like I have to own all my data and not trust companies before it's decided I can no longer access my own data.

matips2• 10 months ago

Yes, you should own your data and do not trust companies. There are a lot o cases when SaS companies used their position to squeeze money from customers. If they are allow do do so, they also be used by their governments to push on other governments.

aarroyoc• 10 months ago

These sanctions are not really effective. I think Cuba is the country that has had them for the most amount of time and... Nothing changed. Instead they force them to develop in house tech which may be better for them in the long term

preisschild2• 10 months ago

Nothing changed

This is not true. The sanctions definitely hurt countries like Cuba or Russia. They have a far harder time growing their economy. Cuba is stuck in the last century and often has total blackouts that last for days. Russia needs to beg countries like Iran or North Korea now for imports.

reeredfdfdf3• 10 months ago

Yet the ruling elites and military still enjoy decent quality of life, it´s mostly the ordinary people who suffer. In case of Russia that´s okay since large parts of the population genuinely support the war, but I´m not so sure about Iran and Cuba, where most are not supportive of their governments anyway.

nlitened• 10 months ago

Russian economy is booming actually, thanks to continued purchasing of oil and gas by Europe and other parts of the world, and the sanctions that block capital outflow out of the country.

trhway2• 10 months ago

If the sanctions weren't effective Russia wouldn't be insisting on the lifting of the sanctions as a part of any Ukrainian deal.

The sanctions significantly slow down Russian development and are more and more making it into just a mineral mining satellite of China. With time the weakened Russia would just split, and the large eastern part will go to China. Some midparts, with Turkic speaking population may even fall into Turkey orbit. Without the oil and gas rich East, the European part of Russia will be just a destitute village on the far margins of civilized Europe as it had been for centuries in the past.

jbstack4• 10 months ago

If the sanctions weren't effective Russia wouldn't be insisting on the lifting of the sanctions as a part of any Ukrainian deal.

If the sanctions were effective Russia wouldn't be offering entirely one-sided deals that it knows nobody is going to accept, because it would be desperate enough to get those sanctions lifted that it would actually have to concede something in a deal.

wojciii3• 10 months ago

Ukrainian sanctions work.

Ask a russian about the price of fuel.

The European sanctions are more of a joke.

I you want to Ukraine to win donate to them directly instead of waiting for the cowardly politicians to get their act together.

orbital-decay2• 10 months ago

Answering that specific question, 98 jumped up 16% this spring and... that's it. Except for that, it's an ordinary curve compared to, say, 5 years ago. And that's mostly the result of actually bombing the refineries.

jbstack4• 10 months ago

Ukrainian sanctions work.

The only reasonable definition of "work" is "stop the thing that motivated the sanction from happening". With that definition, sanctions rarely work (or if they do, not in a very effective way). Russia is still at war with Ukraine. Iran is still developing nuclear weapons. North Korea did develop nuclear weapons.

raincole• 10 months ago

Work?

Let's not kid ourselves. Russia is still killing Ukrainians right now. They're still occupying Ukraine's land right now. Is this what "work" looks like in your dictionary?

Ask a russian about the price of fuel.

Oh I see. In your dictionary a working solution is not to stop the war or get lands back, but to ensure average Russian people suffer. Never mind then.

sesm• 10 months ago

You can check prices for the largest gas station network here (table in the middle): https://lukoilazs.ru/category/stoimost-benzina-na-segodnya/

Prices are in RUB/L, 1 USD ~ 80 RUB, 1 EUR ~ 100 RUB.

Then make your own conclusion.

tgma21• 10 months ago

The sanctions on the Mullah regime have prevented financing of more proxies. There is a direct correlation between loosening enforcement and lifting such sanctions and increased support for Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. It's preposterous to claim that they do not work.

logicchains• 10 months ago

The sanctions on the Mullah regime have prevented financing of more proxies.

Less funding of proxies just means Israel gets away with killing more civilians without consequence.

aenopix• 10 months ago

The US is the one arming terrorist proxies. See Syria with Jolani/Isis/Alqaeda...

lenkite• 10 months ago

Sorry, it is not possible for Cuba to develop any sort of functioning in-house tech with a complete economic embargo. US also "pays" Cuba less than the cost of a NY apartment for its "leased" huge naval base - Guantanamo - the price of which has never changed since the original agreement taken at gun-point.

gilbetron• 10 months ago

What do you think should be done? War? Nothing? Diplomacy didn't work.

adastra2212• 10 months ago

OP, some context from the other side might be helpful.

Yes, there are fines for American companies if they do business with Iranians. That's how sanctions work as I'm sure you're aware. But the story doesn't stop there.

If an American finds out they are transacting with a sanctioned individual, or citizens of a sanctioned country like Iran or North Korea, the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison if they don't immediately cease all communication and break off contact. Hence why they ghost you and remove your data from prod. It sucks, but I would do the same thing in that situation. Nobody should be expected to take that risk.

That's why you have these experiences :(

tgma21• 10 months ago

This is partially true, but not the entirety of the story.

There are blanket sanction waivers (General License) by OFAC to allow certain things. There's also the possibility to get an OFAC license (as GitHub did.)

The real issue is there is little to no advantage (realistically no money to be gained from Iran) or even awareness (sometimes the cloud infrastructure bans Iran by default and you don't have enough users to even know that's the case to care.) The legal counsels would generally be conservative and advise against it; there needs to be someone from the business side, e.g. a product manager that cares enough to try to push back on the legal. There often is not or it is hard to justify the tiniest risk, hence you block.

jeroenhd3• 10 months ago

This kind of assumes Microsoft has not already tried to get an exception, or that its legal team considers it likely that an exception will be granted.

Various tools hosted on Github can be considered dual-use (i.e. AES/TLS libraries). Furthermore, Microsoft was made to apply sanctions against Karim Khan of the ICC for his involvement in investigating the genocide of Palestinians; I doubt Microsoft would be granted an exception so they can serve Hamas' greatest supporter after that.

I don't know if Microsoft has applied for any exceptions, but even if they did, I doubt they'd be able to get them. That's on top of the probability of bad publicity ("Microsoft wants to cut deal with Iran") and the lack of incentive you mentioned.

underdeserver• 10 months ago

From Wikipedia:

The Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is a financial intelligence and enforcement agency of the United States Treasury Department. It administers and enforces economic and trade sanctions in support of U.S. national security and foreign policy objectives.

bibelo4• 10 months ago

Very relevant info I was not aware of

So should we (people outside US) sanction these companies, so that they put the same pressure on US government to stop forcing them from applying sanctions?

adastra2212• 10 months ago

If you want to, sure. Kind of a side point, but that's not really what sanctions are for. It's more of an economic blockade, which stymies the growth of the country. Even if there is no regime change, it makes the country less of a threat over time.

pjc50• 10 months ago

I'd choose more carefully which fight you want to pick at the moment, tbh. There's a very long list of unreasonable behaviors to complain about.

nurettin• 10 months ago

Like these EU fines?

    * May 22, 2023, Meta €1.2 billion.
    * July 22, 2024, Uber €290 million.
    * April 23, 2025, Apple €500 million.
    * September 4, 2025, Google €2.95 billion.

notjosh• 10 months ago

your comment is helpful context, especially as a foreigner. but would you be able to edit the "pounding in the ass" phrase out in future when referring to prison? thank you <3

adastra2212• 10 months ago

Your comment is understandable as a foreigner! Look up our federal prison system sometime. The description is apt.

You either kill someone, or become someone's bitch on the first day, then you'll be alright.

(It's an Office Space reference, btw, but our prisons are genuinely inhumane and not rehabilitative.)

mvdtnz3• 10 months ago

Don't police other people's language.

fransje265• 10 months ago

"pounding in the ass" is a cultural reference to the 1999 movie Office Space.

surgical_fire• 10 months ago

It's a reference to Office Space, one of the all time best movies ever made.

vasco3• 10 months ago

In all of these situations if you want to do the right thing you need plausible deniability. Network block IPs from Iran, don't block VPNs, done, users from sanctioned countries can use your software but you're also going by the rule.

adastra2212• 10 months ago

And that's generally what people do. Make a best effort, and then it is "don't ask, don't tell." Unless you have specific KYC rules in your industry.

aussieguy1234• 10 months ago

This also has plausible deniability on the other side. If Iranian government thugs question a citizens VPN use to access subversive content (women's rights, LGBT content?), they can say it was to evade US sanctions, wether true or not.

jbm• 10 months ago

I used to agree with this line of reasoning, but then I saw that the same process was used to block war crimes investigators from using Microsoft's software.

danlitt5• 10 months ago

Does that affect the reasoning? Even though I think it is profoundly wrong, I am not going to risk 20 years in prison for something realistically nobody is going to care about.

TiredOfLife• 10 months ago

Except that didn't happen

https://www.politico.eu/article/microsoft-did-not-cut-servic...

Oleh_h• 10 months ago

Yeah, that's what sanctions do — making pressure on everyone in the country (from the authorities to the usual people).

chabska• 10 months ago

Nobody should be expected to take that risk

I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.

Their authoritarian militaristic government that doesn't care for human rights.

If you apply the same standard to the North Korean citizens, that they should not be expected to "take that risk", they your country's sanctions are pure collective punishment with no strategic value. You just tortured people for fun.

bradlys• 10 months ago

Who is "you"?

The US government doesn't reflect the majority of Americans, at all. It reflects capital interests - which the majority of Americans are not. Majority of Americans are laborers.

Keirmot2• 10 months ago

Sanctions have a theoretical basis behind them. In the Western Political Philosophical Canon, leaders and elites are expected to strive for the Common Good. From that perspective, sanctions aren’t meant as “torture for fun,” (as you put it) but as a way of creating pressure so governments change their behavior without having to resort to war. They’re basically a tool to raise the cost of bad actions and make it more attractive to adjust course.

At the same time, sanctions also work in other ways: they punish governments that break international norms, they send a signal to the world about what’s considered unacceptable, and they reaffirm shared values. That’s why they’re still used despite the harsh effects on ordinary people. They aren’t a perfect solution, but in Western thinking their role is to combine pressure, deterrence and symbolism, rather than just collective punishment for its own sake.

waihtis• 10 months ago

One would think the finger pointing should go towards the shitty governments causing trouble and pain for their own citizens, but somehow you've managed to find an angle to blame the West.

It is truly an unthankful job being the saviour of the entire world.

chickenzzzzu• 10 months ago

[flagged]

sofixa2• 10 months ago

You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.

That's (usually) a secondary goal of sanctions, if even that. The primary is to restrict the regime's ability to fund its growth, stability and military operations.

Russia can no longer (that easily) sell its oil and gas? Great, that's less money to invest into rockets and drones and tanks against Ukraine. It's also less money in the pockets of the oligarchs.

Realistically, you can't really push the civilians of a country to revolt with sanctions, or bombing. As Carl Spaatz said:

Morale in a totalitarian society is irrelevant so long as the control patterns function effectively.

Seattle35032• 10 months ago

You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.

I think the argument is that you deprive belligerent companies from the resources they need to attack and harm others. The suffering their citizens endure is unfortunate, but why should Americans take the blame when Kim Jong Un is so obviously culpable?

umanwizard7• 10 months ago

and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea

No, I don't do this. I'm not in charge of the government. Who is "we" ?

ajuc4• 10 months ago

You misunderstand the goal of the sanctions.

Sanctions are there to cut off 1-2% of GDP each year from the dictatorships' economies.

Over 30 years that turns countries into harmless (to the West) backwater shitholes.

The consequences towards the local populations are just a side-effect (sometimes wanted, sometimes not).

You cannot expect people outside of your dicatorship to prioritize your well being over their own safety. It's on you to fix your country. If you won't - people will isolate you to keep their countries safe.

Can't really blame them.

nashashmi2• 10 months ago

with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.

Is this really a US endeavor by policy?

incone123• 10 months ago

Do you think North Korean leaders would be nicer to their people if there were no sanctions?

kelnos15• 10 months ago

I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries...

"You all" is a weird way of putting it. I don't support my government levying sanctions on these countries, but I have zero power to change it.

It's funny, as the gist author points out that he doesn't support the actions of the Islamic Republic, and has no power to change it because it's minority rule by a theocratic dictatorship.

But even in the US, no one I've ever had the option to vote for (and who had even a remote chance of winning) would ever consider lifting these sanctions. So I am similarly powerless to change this situation.

I think sanctions are largely pointless if their stated goal is to get citizens to rise up and change their governments. Asking people to risk their lives (when you're not risking anything at all) is an awful thing to do, and this sort of thing isn't likely to work.

But it's probably not really that; the idea is to choke the economies of these countries so they can't do whatever Bad Thing the sanction-leviers are worried about (like developing nuclear weapons). How effective sanctions are at achieving that goal is an exercise left to the reader. And even if they are effective, there's a lot of collateral damage that hurts people who have no say in the matter.

tonyhart7• 10 months ago

don't get me wrong, US gov has many flaw and cons but are you seriously comparing it to like north korea??? this is fucking crazy

also what company even can do???? its law from gov

junon2• 10 months ago

"We" don't do anything. We have a very out-of-touch government at the moment. A lot of us would like things to be very, very different.

honeybadger1• 10 months ago

you can't just use harsh language to remove dictators or fascist leaders.

koonsolo• 10 months ago

So your proposal is that we do business with all these countries so they have thriving economies with more money they can invest into their government and military?

klntsky• 10 months ago

with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.

I dont't know what is this based on, but no, sanctions are needed to stop the other party from benefitting from economic activity, not to punish.

lelanthran2• 10 months ago

I've seen this sentiment so many times from westerners. You all say this, and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government

That's a total non-sequitor.

GP stated that he will personally face prison time for going against the laws of his country.

Why would anyone risk jail time for you? For your countrymen? Why don't you risk jail time for some other country?

vovavili• 10 months ago

with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government

The justification is reduced financial capacity for war and similar atrocities.

coldtea• 10 months ago

with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.

That's the PR justification. The real one is "to hurt the countries and make them do as we say" and "because we can".

deadbabe• 10 months ago

Those countries wouldn’t benefit even if the embargos were lifted. Cuba and North Korea would still be shitty places even if the US had no sanctions on them. There is nothing the US could provide these countries through trade that would suddenly make life better.

hrbsoscbfo2• 10 months ago

you
you
you

You don’t understand what the word “you” means.

petre• 10 months ago

Well, that's too bad. Lifting sanctions opens up opportunities for non-alligned government spies and saboteurs. I recall there is a problem with remote workers from the DPRK employed by Western companies. These citizens are already collectively punished by their governments. I used to live in such a country until the US managed to lead on the USSR into bankrupting themselves. Thank you, America! Thank you Ronald Reagan for all the USSR jokes! Thank you Michael Gorbachev for letting it slide!

gosub100• 10 months ago

It's like saying "all you" Iranians are choosing to publicly hang political prisoners using (Western) construction equipment.

roenxi2• 10 months ago

I just want to add one angle I don't think the other comments covered well - it is obvious that nobody pushing the propaganda angle ("encouraging them to rise up") is serious because the track record is far too clear. I can't think of an instance where sanctions have ever triggered a political change and if they do then it is rarer than a country's elites changing direction due to internal political concerns. Nobody believes sanctions will cause political change in their targets. It is almost unthinkable that they would. What could that even look like? If someone has the power to threaten a country then they don't need to actually levy the sanctions to get compliance. Countries only get sanctioned if the sanctions aren't enough pressure to cause change.

The point of sanctions is to cripple the middle and lower classes, destroying a country's ability to fund a military. That actually makes it less likely for a dictatorship to get overthrown - the middle class is too poor to organise which is desirable from the West's perspective. Dictatorships are really bad at waging war effectively, they struggle to handle the complex logistics and are easier to distract and threaten.

somenameforme• 10 months ago

It's not for fun. It's that politicians are largely impotent in many situations, but refuse to accept this. I mean they're the leader of entire countries after all, and in the case of the US you're the leader of ostensibly the strongest military in the world, with enough nukes to end the world at your finger tips 24/7. How can you not be omnipotent, the most powerful person alive!?

But then it turns out that war is too dirty, cyber stuff isn't dirty enough. So what's left? Economics - sanctions. We've carried out 374 ultra important meetings, and traveled to 73 different countries, to prepare this critical 974th package of sanctions. This time it'll actually do something and be totally more effective than other 973, in spite of the fact that obviously the most impactful things are the first to be sanctioned.

It's obviously little more than theatrics, but it lets politicians feel powerful and like they're exerting influence on their enemies. And indeed, they may be responsible, at least in poorer countries for some people starving, which is then mental gymnasticed into 'Ah hah! They'll blame their government, overthrow them and become our ally, the people making them starve.'

It's really a shock that seems to basically never come to fruition. Well except when you're sanctioning a third of the planet [1], including many of the most unstable places in the world, and any time there's a regime change in these places - 'Ah hah! See? Sanctions work!' The fact that said change would often have happened in any case is kindly swept aside. It's akin to the joke that Zerohedge has successfully predicted 53 of the last 3 economic recessions.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_government_sanct...

guappa• 10 months ago

This is also applied to italian citizens individually if they say documented facts about what is happening in Palestine.

mgax• 10 months ago

For fun?

jaapz• 10 months ago

and yet at the same time you levy economic sanctions on countries like Iran, Cuba, and North Korea, with the justification that by making their citizens lives horrific, you encourage them to rise against their government.

What other options are there, except idly sitting by or invading?

wang_li• 10 months ago

Not trading with a despot can just be not trading with a despot. It doesn't have to have an agenda.

If I personally choose to boycott a sneaker brand because I have a firm belief that they run sweatshops in a foreign country, is that collective punishment? No, I'm just not supporting someone who doesn't align with my values. Even if, as a side effect, the workers won't be getting the pittance that they would have gotten from my purchase.

matheusmoreira• 10 months ago

I for one want the USA to apply more sanctions, not less. It's debatable whether country-wide sanctions are just or even effective but I still think they should be applying sanctions much more freely than they are now.

The USA applied sanctions to the family members and law practice of a supreme court judge from my country literally yesterday. It's said this cut them off from hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue.

It really kills their champagne socialism nonsense. They destroy my country and then enjoy foreign developed nations on taxpayer dime. You have no idea how good it feels to see these "gods" get what they deserve. I'll be forever thankful to Trump for it.

breppp• 10 months ago

So without sanctions or a military strike, how will a nuclear program will evaporate? spontaneously? Or do you think that nuclear blackmail like the NK case is something that should be accepted

nmilo2• 10 months ago

This the exact same as the email from the post, but the other way around. Either both normal Iranians are responsible for arming Russians and normal Americans are responsible for sanctions, or neither are. In general I don’t like blaming people for the actions of their government.

ezoe• 10 months ago

Well, we let China grow but there is no democracy or human right in China.

piokoch• 10 months ago

It's year 2025.

You just open company in Brazil or Argentina and you can purchase whatever you want. Before 1989 communistic countries were overcoming CoCom restrictions in this way. Russia is doing this successfully since 2014. Surely Iran, North Korea are doing the same, this is really a no brainer and today and it is not even hard or costly, as nobody needs to physically travel, money transfers go through Kaiman, Netherlands Antilles, City of London Corp., etc. Nobody is able to track them.

More. Nobody even tries to hide anymore. Germany is openly purchasing Russian oil, branded as "Kazakhstani", through Druzba pipe. The Netherlands is buying Russian gasoline branded as "Indian". France is buying Russian LNG and it is not event trying to pretend that it is not Russian.

We will wait very long for those who will pay this $1M fine or go to prison.

varjag5• 10 months ago

Germany is not purchasing Russian oil. The only two EU states doing so are Hungary and Slovakia and both have vocally pro-Russian governments.

bambax5• 10 months ago

in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison

Ha ha ha, it's so funny and harmless to make fun of people in prison, because they all deserve it, right? And the US is a free country?

Sorry but this just makes me incredibly angry.

pessimizer3• 10 months ago

It's simply bizarre that dreams of US "justice" involve interracial homosexual rape fantasies. Of course the interracial part that creeps in is a reminder that the US is not free. It still hasn't paid for hundreds of years of hard forced labor from many individuals. The guilt from this causes it to act strangely.

lucianbr4• 10 months ago

I read it rather as a description of how very serious the threat of prison is, and why the risk is not worth it. Didn't seem funny to me at all, though I may well be reading it wrong.

It certainly didn't seem like the commenter was agreeing with the way the government runs prisons or what happens in them. Again, maybe they do, and I just failed to see it.

cyphar• 10 months ago

I do get your point, but in this particular case, it's a quote from Office Space (1999) and while the movie is a comedy, I don't think it's fair to say that it was specifically a joke about or making light of sexual violence in prisons. The characters in the movie are also obviously scared about the possibility[1], so I'm not even sure I would characterise it as a simple joke (it is used as a callback in the form of a joke later but it is again something the character is having a nightmare about[2] and the joke is based on the absurdity of the phrase and the naivete of the main character, not what the phrase is referencing).

This is also not a uniquely US-specific thing, lots of UK dramas have made similar jokes (for just one example, see [3]). Obviously I expect you would find those objectionable too, my point was just that it's not a US-specific thing -- humans have a tendency to make light of things like that as humour and some people understandably don't see the humour in it. Such is the human condition...

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBzvMLW0ii4 [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htCJTPu8GPE [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xM8DfCgVWx8&t=19

halfmatthalfcat• 10 months ago

What's worse - never knowing it exists and isn't talked about, or it being at least vocalized and known in pop culture, even if it's used as the butt of a joke? Yes it's not funny but some people use humor to convey terrible things to make it socially acceptable or palatable.

andrepd2• 10 months ago

the stakes go up: $1M USD fine and up to 20 years in federal prison. Oh and that's a personal risk -- you, the manager or executive in charge, and anyone else who is in the know on the transaction is now facing 20 years in federal pounding-in-the-ass prison

If only this notion of personal criminal responsibility was applied to other types of private company criminality (2008 gfc, cartelization in many industries, the many private data "leaks", ...)

lazide10• 10 months ago

That’s because in one case you’re doing something the gov’t doesn’t like, in the other…

lucianbr4• 10 months ago

This was my thought too. When the government really wants corporations to toe the line, suddenly there's no problem with "piercing the corporate veil" and other such equivocations. They know what works - threaten executives with prison. The solution exists and is applied already. For other things such as polluting the environment or misusing citizens private data... the truth is government doesn't really care.

rimprobablyly• 10 months ago

Could your comment to the op be classed as "transacting with a sanctioned individual?"

adastra2212• 10 months ago

No, there is no commercial transaction here. You might say “neither is GitHub benefiting from a non-paying Iranian customer” but it is at least not 100% clear on the latter case. GitHub, as a business, benefits from non-paying users & their data.

orphea• 10 months ago

  > Yes, there are fines for American companies if they do business with Iranians.

With Iranians or residents (currently located) in Iran? This is an important distinction.

Edited for clarity (thanks bloak)

bloak• 10 months ago

"Residency" is a very slippery concept. "Currently located in" would be clearer, though you probably wouldn't want to include diplomatic staff ... or would you?

garbagewoman4• 10 months ago

I love how your smarmy tone matches the responses he got down to the letter

potato3732842• 10 months ago

Nobody who hasn't very a) clearly done wrong or b) actually chooses to fight the feds in court actually going to prison though.

It's just a threat the fedcops get to use to force you to take a plea deal. It's basically a big boy version of how your local prosecutor behaves. Instead of filing BS charges that will never stick in an attempt to "mark it up to mark it down", the fedcops are more equal so they have

Every time you see someone on HN screeching about how we ought to have federal regulation and stiff penalties for whatever their pet issue is remember that this is what that looks like.

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK2• 10 months ago

I think sanctions are pointless. Just do business with Iran as usual, but use the money earned to take out the ayatollah and his revolutionary guard. Or give that money to Israel to do the job.

H8crilA• 10 months ago

Taking out a regime is easy. Every occupation of Afghanistan in history has been prematurely terminated mere moments before achieving its goal :(

sporkxrocket2• 10 months ago

We should be sanctioning Israel, not giving them even more money.

Obscurity4340• 10 months ago

Its kind of weird how every time some executive or company gets exposed as having done some horrible or massively illegal thing, they can never be punished cuz its a business but right here there are direct penalties that apply regardless.

If only they applied something like this to the rest of the corporate world, companies would be far better behaved and polite

thekingshorses• 10 months ago

Interesting. So if you want to delete FB account and all your data, all you have to do is VPN from Iran?

hrbsoscbfo2• 10 months ago

I worked at a place where we tried hiring an Iranian. Ignorant of the law, some of us were surprised when the legal department pulled the plug on the whole process.

I was kind of surprised by the whole thing because he was currently employed at another company. We went so far in the process that he quit his other job and we had him in the office for his first day of work, had a big lunch with him and everything. We fucked him on that.

adastra2212• 10 months ago

You had him in the office? So he was in the US on a legal permit? Then IANAL but I think your legal dept fucked up. I know many Iranians working here in Silicon Valley. They have refugee permits and are 100% legal workers. Unless you are in defense tech or something which has stricter employment laws, your company did overreact.

snickerdoodle143• 10 months ago

It's pretty hilarious how the americans have corporate personhood so businesses can pretend to be people when it suits them, to shield their workers from the law.

But of course this veil can be pierced when it suits the administration, but not when it'd positively benefit the life of american citizens.

sidewndr46• 10 months ago

"you, the manager or executive in charge"

Let's be realistic here. There are no executives or board members who faced charges for prohibited transactions with Iran or NK. It's not like we don't have a steady stream of companies reporting that they inadvertently hired NK citizens remotely.

N_Lens• 10 months ago

Just a casual “pound-me-in-the-ass prison” top comment on HN (no this type of prison isn’t civilized or the mark of a mature criminal justice system or society).

Der_Einzige• 10 months ago

You have to figure out how to make Americans stop feeling schadenfreude. They love the idea that these thugs/criminals in prison are being subjected to such conditions. The cruelty is the point.

We simply love to inflict pain and suffering. This is why we circumcise, why we ear crop, tail dock, create animals, put people in solitary, etc.

fennecbutt8• 10 months ago

Totally agree. But tbf you look at modern media and these things are still perpetuated. Just look at violence done on camera and off camera in TV shows and to whom. Which jokes are made and about whom - many don't even notice because it's so acceptable to treat a class, gender, etc a certain way that it doesn't even cross anybody's mind.

fennecbutt8• 10 months ago

Do we have to still use the phrase "pounding-in-the-ass" when the general sense of it has been proven untrue and not particularly as common as people would think. I guess rape jokes are just funny when they're about certain people.

Same thing with "sod" still being in common usage. Pretty bizarre to be allowed to get married in some countries now but there's still all these historical bits and pieces.

xg153• 10 months ago

Interesting to get to know this, even as a non-Iranian.

Even more with Trump's current push to sanction the ICC.

deadfece• 10 months ago

If you access grepular outside of Iran, you get something even worse: their website.

sorushn4• 10 months ago

I am NOT asking for the removal of the sanctions targeted at the Islamic Republic of Iran.

All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government. Just a bullying tactic by the US with zero moral justifications, despite how it's framed by the media.

tmnvdb• 10 months ago

Citation needed. As far is I know this is simply false. Different sanctions have different goals. Regime change is very rarely a goal. Often it is to reduce economic growth to keep/make the country weak, or to achieve some other goal. See for example sactions on India, which are definitely not meant to overthrow the indian government.

theshrike793• 10 months ago

Sometimes it's both.

"Your country is sanctioned because your government is being a global ass, wink-wink"

Implying that a change in government will lift the sanctions.

benced• 10 months ago

Seems like the moral justification would be to encourage overthrowing the government? The literature on sanction is mixed but zero is overstating it.

sorushn4• 10 months ago

Which is also not true, as we're seeing in Syria.

kennywinker6• 10 months ago

So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?

I’m aware there are consequences to sanctions, and the way they are implemented is often half-assed or hypocritical (e.g. the way that russian oil still flows) but to drop all sanctions…

Is that not like saying boycotts hurt employees who had nothing to do with the decisions so we should never boycott?

sorushn4• 10 months ago

So, we should just do business as usual with countries committing war crimes or genocide? Aggressors in war, users of chemical weapons on their own people?

That's what the US has been doing since forever, even actively participating in the war crimes. If you think any of the stated reasons for the sanctions are real, I have a bridge to sell you.

eunos• 10 months ago

Or moving towards a multipolar equilibrium so that a pole can't unilaterally decide about those.

JumpCrisscross9• 10 months ago

All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians

Objectively untrue. Many of the Russian sanctions, for example, targeted Putin’s inner circle.

jeroenhd3• 10 months ago

They may not be normal civilians, but many of Putin's friends targeted by sanctions are not government officials, which does make them civilians. In other cases sanctions are targeted at government officials personally rather than the parts of government they influence, like targeting their side business, their stock, or their personal property.

There are sanctions targeting governments specifically, but usually government sanctions also target civilians. You can't exactly expect a sanctioned government to be transparent, it'll hide its government business under company names if you let it.

t1E9mE7JTRjf3• 10 months ago

All sanctions are designed to hurt civilians, so that they may overthrow their government.

That requires some blind faith to believe. In that I don't think those applying them really expect overthrowing the government to result. I would guess sanctions are designed to hurt and weaken, to make them less of an adversary. Although that's a harder sell, so doesn't get presented that way.

LAC-Tech• 10 months ago

I talk to a few Iranians online. All very nice people. You'd think they had horns on their heads and cloven hooves the way certain people in the US talks about them.

Even the regime itself.. look I wouldn't to live there. But comparing it to somewhere like North Korea is ridiculous. Even by Middle Eastern standards it's not at the bottom.

randomNumber73• 10 months ago

Yes its great. If you move there you can give away your daughter to be the 3.rd woman of s.o. at the age of 9.

daniel_iversen• 10 months ago

By the way, did you know you could return 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons instead of 403 Forbidden when you're going to ban me next time?

Had no idea, interesting!

harperlee• 10 months ago

451 coming from here by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

userabchn• 10 months ago

The website of an American company returned a blank page to me. I thought that they must have made a mistake and that it would be fixed soon. Several days later it was still returning a blank page, so I sent them an email in case they didn't know. It turns out that they don't want to deal with the laws of other countries (EU's GDPR, etc.) and so simply return a blank page for anyone visiting from outside America. A "451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons" or some other type of explanation would have been less confusing than the blank page.

jeroenhd3• 10 months ago

This crap is why everyone should fear the Apple-like centralisation for software distribution options that other companies like Google and Microsoft are inching towards.

Now it's just Iran/Cuba/North Korea, but you're essentially letting the increasingly aggressive American government decide who can or cannot publish software. The Americans are not afraid of adding their political enemies from allied countries to the sanction list, as can be seen when they decided to go after the judge in the Israel genocide case. Who knows who will be next now that they're blatantly cracking down on free speech.

The Apple app store/Google Play/Microsoft Store are great conveniences, but they must never be the only way to access software on your device. Apple's EU exception falls short for still requiring an Apple account to pay fees that no judge will accept when the first lawsuit hits. Sure, Epic Games has offered to pay those fees just to spite Apple, but Epic can only pay those fees to people they're allowed to pay.

jbstack4• 10 months ago

I completely agree, but what can actually be done about this? It feels like it's too late.

mschuster913• 10 months ago

Well, the EU has about half a billion people, India and China about 1.5 billion people - all larger markets (by headcount) than the US domestic market, so nothing that any American company can just choose to ignore.

Either of these three markets can set rules on what device manufacturers have to do in order to be allowed to access the market, and they all use that power - China is particularly infamous (with Apple having had to set up a dedicated iCloud instance to which the Chinese government may or may not have a backdoor), India more focuses on the share of production that happens in China, and the EU is seriously tightening the screws on American companies when it comes to arbitrarily denying store access.

slg• 10 months ago

Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.

The "your decision" in that response is really off-putting. I know the law is what it is with sanctions like this. However, it is a failing of basic human empathy to blame other common citizens of a country for the actions of their government while we almost certainly do not endorse all the actions of our own government and would probably be a little upset if a foreigner assumed we did.

perching_aix4• 10 months ago

This frustrates me as well. It is so incredibly common, yet it never passes even basic scrutiny. For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it. It's easy to ignore this when things are going okay, but becomes very uncomfortable all of a sudden when that changes.

And this is to say nothing about how it is people that are chosen, not their individual choices. This is why it irks me when people are interviewed about their knowhow with respect to their political stance. It's basically irrelevant. They need a good read on the person of their choice, not a good read on the choices. If it was about a choice instead of a person, it would be a referendum, not an election.

EugeneOZ• 10 months ago

Some democracies are "democracies". The dictator will get 80% of votes no matter what.

IshKebab• 10 months ago

the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population

Not really. The number of people who might change their minds and thus swing the result either way is indeed small. But it isn't accurate to say they are the ones that choose.

The people in guaranteed states/counties still choose; it's just that almost always choose the same answer.

But even that doesn't mean they can be ignored. They can be ignored at voting time, but before that political parties have to take them into account. They basically determine where the centre is. For example they are the reason the American centre is so much further right than the UK centre.

If you took American parties and held an election of them in the UK you would find that all those reliably conservative counties who you would say don't have any effect on the result are suddenly not so supportive of the right-wing option.

FPTP is still dumb and frustrating though.

sofixa2• 10 months ago

For one, even in typical modern democracies, the active administration is chosen by like a third of the voting population via a first-pass-the-post system or a close analog of it

"typical modern democracies" don't use the extremely terrible first past the post. It's mostly used in the UK and a few former colonies, but most of the world's democracies (even the flawed ones) have realised its shortcomings and have evolved past it.

lbreakjai• 10 months ago

It's especially objectionable and condescending since the author of the blog comes from a democratic country selling weapons to a genocidal state, as are most of us here.

tpm4• 10 months ago

Iran is much less democratic than the US and the rest of the Western world. 158th from 179 entries here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V-Dem_Democracy_Indices

bambax5• 10 months ago

It's also interesting if the comment comes from a US person, given that the US are primarily responsible for the political situation in Iran.

drstewart2• 10 months ago

Why is it interesting? I thought the common people aren't responsible for the actions of their government?

grumple• 10 months ago

This is not true and is nonsensical. The Iranian regime is explicitly anti-American, and it was American inaction that allowed them to rise to power. If America had intervened during the revolution, they could have eliminated the regime in its infancy and saved half a century of headaches and many lives lost due to Iranian wars and terror proxies.

The US also did not create political Islam, which predates the US by over 1000 years. Blaming the US for the problems of this region which has always had these problems is counter-factual. The problems of this part of the world - poverty, violence, religious oppression and dictatorships - predate western civilization as a whole, and in fact the oppressive empires from the Middle East / North Africa spread earlier and wider than western empires.

squigz2• 10 months ago

A couple years ago I was hanging out in a Discord server for a jigsaw puzzling site. They made a policy change to remove all pictures from Russia and ban further submissions of Russian photos. I tried to convince them that this was probably counter-productive, but apparently that means I support Russia's actions.

There are valid ways to punish a country for aggressive or oppressive actions - like sanctions - and there are non-valid ways - inherently blaming and then ostracizing every member of the country, for example. And when you take the position that, "If you don't agree with my actions, you're also part of the problem" you are not doing anything but causing people to get annoyed with you and your position, and reducing credibility for the groups you're trying to advocate for. In other words, you're doing more harm than good.

ravishi• 10 months ago

Do you get the irony of commenting this on a post about a single person complaining about how they are unfairly affected by sanctions put up against their country?

a_cardboard_box• 10 months ago

The post doesn't blame individual Americans. There is no irony.

g8oz• 10 months ago

Looking forward to a service that says something like:

"American IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Israel so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians."

phendrenad22• 10 months ago

This, 1000%. I think there's a certain kind of thinking that low-IQ people fall into, which is blaming civilians for the actions of their government, often with the coping "they should just overthrow their government" (because it's that easy!)

Sadly, in our world where everyone has a voice, you're going to get a lot of this. There's no avoiding the stupids.

hashinova• 10 months ago

(because it's that easy!)

I don't think anyone believes it is easy, but are sanctions not at least an incentive to try?

elzbardico• 10 months ago

Sanctions don't work. Period.

The only thing they can do is to make dictators more popular and provide them with an excuse for their economic and political failures.

When someone in Cuba is denied something because of Sanctions, they are not going to blame the Castro family, they are going to think, "Hey, Fidel was always right! those Americans are just a bunch of sadist psychopaths that are trying to destroy my country.

In general, a good rule of thumb in life, is that whatever policy people like John McCain or Lindsey Graham defend, the right position is the exact opposite of theirs.

theshrike793• 10 months ago

Ironically McCain was the last republican who actually worked with the other side. The current US regime is hard-line party people with zero ability to compromise.

But what you're saying is that sanctions are more of a marketing issue when it comes to who is blamed?

jazzyjackson3• 10 months ago

sanctions don't work
Economic failures

Hmmm

reeredfdfdf3• 10 months ago

Most educated Iranians hate their government. The problem is that a revolution isn't easy when the government has all the guns, and the military & revolutionary guard remain loyal, and have no problem with shooting masses of innocent civilians to retain their power.

Sanctions that worsen things for ordinary people really isn't going to change much in countries like this. It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.

tgma21• 10 months ago

Most educated Iranians hate their government

Where did you get that data from and what do you mean by "hate" in quantifiable terms? (just being "unhappy" with outcomes of certain policies does not mean they would necessarily want to uproot everything for the better)

reeredfdfdf3• 10 months ago

If you meet educated Iranians, and read news on what's happening in the country, it's pretty obvious. Whether it's "hate" or "deeply dislike" may vary by person.

sfn428• 10 months ago

People always say stuff like this, but from my pov it doesn't matter what the populace thinks. They are directly supporting their government with everything they do. They are producing goods and services, they are the army, they are the government, the people are the country.

They have the power to choose who rules them if they want to. Nobody else does. Iranians are responsible for Iran's actions just like Russians are responsible for Russia's actions and Americans are responsible for America's actions.

4gotunameagain2• 10 months ago

What should they do ? Stop working, or protest and risk getting killed ?

It's easy to call for action from your comfortable life.

No, the populace does not bear the same responsibility for the country's actions in all countries. Swiss with direct democracy bear much higher responsibility than systematically oppressed populace in other countries.

tgma21• 10 months ago

This is an extremely important, often overlooked, point. I also know of many "educated Iranians" living in the US who voice their opinion as GP suggests, and are self-proclaimed to be anti-regime. However, they travel to Iran to visit family and friends twice a year and take an iPhone or two on their way to gift them, directly benefiting the Mullah's system. I don't think a jew would have gone back to Nazi Germany to visit family, so I would take "hate the government" with a grain of salt when everything you do benefits the same establishment.

Some even line up to vote for sham Presidential elections of the Mullah regime, whose turnout legitimizes the regime, while inside the United States! Being Stanford educated does not prevent this seemingly cognitive dissonance or perhaps deception; it actually makes that more likely.

nemothekid2• 10 months ago

This is a historically ignorant take, especially when you consider the country being talked about is Iran. As an American it's very easy to assume that a "government revolution" is something that can executed by the will of the people.

Iran had a democratic government. That democratic government voted to do something against Britian's economic interests. In response America dissolved it's government.

If I lived in a nation where any government instability would be used by wealth foreign powers who didn't care if I lived or died, I would also be hesitant in brewing any anti-government fervor.

You can't hold them wholly responsible when they don't even have the power of true self determination.

kelnos15• 10 months ago

Actually, the US is responsible for Iran's actions. We're the ones who meddled in their government and pushed them to the point they're at today.

Regardless, it's laughable to think that regular Iranian citizens are just as responsible for their theocratic dictatorship as Americans are for the US's (crumbling) representative democracy. Those two things are not the same at all. Your average Iranian has zero influence over what the Iranian government does. The average American... put Trump in office, either by voting for him or by abstaining.

vintermann2• 10 months ago

A revolution also isn't easy when you know that the revolutions you could have, would be the ones supported by foreign groups that absolutely don't want your country well. USA on no account will tolerate an Iran which is both free and democratic and at all economically developed, because they don't trust a democratic public to support pro-American policies in the middle east - especially related to Israel and oil. Just like they don't trust that in any of the Arab states.

If you want a democratic Iran, both the current government of Iran and its most powerful enemies will do everything they can to stop you.

e-khadem3• 10 months ago

I would argue that not every society will thrive under a democracy. The people must be somewhat educated, politically savy, considerate, and accommodating. At least this has to be true in the beginning of a democracy where the people are laying the foundations.

Now I agree that the policies of the United States may not always be in the interest of the people from that part of the world, but a "mild" dictator like the one that the Saudi Arabia has or the one that Turkey has right now, these are better models sometimes. The SA of 50 years ago had no notion of human rights and severely under developed and could in no way support a democracy. Of course a dictatorship is not ideal, and the people of SA will have to pay a terrible price for it some day, but for now a dictatorship that "bows" to the west is not the worst thing either.

sigmoid102• 10 months ago

People here make it easy on themselves by blaming everything on "the government," but you should never underestimate the level of brainwashing. According to independent polls, it's more like 50% of Iranians still support their government. And it used to be closer to 80% a few years ago. I was lucky enough to be born into one of the wealthier nations, and our trust levels are much lower, despite our government doing not nearly as much crazy obviously evil stuff. I'd say the problem is not support of the government, it is education. The better educated people are, the less likely they are to blindly trust authority. And Iran lost most of its educated people already in the islamic revolution.

tgma21• 10 months ago

Independent polls? How do you conduct such a poll reliably when there are legitimate consequences in expressing you have a certain opinion?

kelnos15• 10 months ago

The better educated people are, the less likely they are to blindly trust authority.

And on the flip side of that, the less educated people are, the more susceptible they are to propaganda.

gnfargbl2• 10 months ago

The primary intent of sanctions isn't to foment revolution -- policymakers are well aware of the reality you outline.

The actual intent of sanctions is to cause economic damage. In that respect this is an account of the sanctions working exactly as intended: they are making it harder for OP to work as a software developer, which makes it harder for the Iranian regime to benefit (directly or indirectly) from the efforts of software developers in Iran.

lm28469• 10 months ago

That's the theory yes, in practice we can clearly see that some uneducated people gladly blame all Iranians for the actions of their leaders.

It's probably some kind of coping mechanism for not knowing anything about the people they're talking about, or they want to keep their world view nice and clean: we, the good guys, VS them, the uncivilized bad guys. It's as accurate as saying "all Americans are pro Maga white Christians because obviously if they weren't their government would be different"

aleph_minus_one• 10 months ago

they are making it harder for OP to work as a software developer, which makes it harder for the Iranian regime to benefit (directly or indirectly) from the efforts of software developers in Iran.

A shower thought:

Wouldn't it make more sense if country A that considers sanctions against country B provided very "cushy" immigration laws for highly educated people from country B so that country A profits from these people's efforts while country B will suffer from a brain drain?

DanielHB2• 10 months ago

I always thought the main goal of sanctions was to deprive the sanctioned governments of income which in turns makes it harder for them to cause problems externally and hold power internally.

And by "hold power internally" I don't mean population uprising, I mean to keep the factions within the government (especially the military) united under the leadership by buying them out.

I believe increased population unhappiness is more of a side-effect that can be both beneficial (if it incites anti-government sentiment) or detrimental (if it incites nationalism) to the country imposing sanctions.

giancarlostoro• 10 months ago

It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.

Like we did in Afghanistan? Because we lost Afghanistan in the same time we took the country, about two weeks.

kelnos15• 10 months ago

It would be much more productive to try turn the army against the regime, or organize political and armed resistance.

The current government of Iran is a direct result of the US's meddling in this way, so I'm not convinced this is a winning strategy either.

t1E9mE7JTRjf3• 10 months ago

It's a sad story all round. I hope the world gets more decentralised, so that people get less caught up in the politics of others. I can't remember the exact quote, about world war 1 or 2, but it was along the lines of "war is when people who don't know each other fight, for people who do know each other". Hits hard.

jbstack4• 10 months ago

I hope the world gets more decentralised

It's not looking too likely. You have Google's planned app developer verification, the UK's Online Safety Act, the EU's plans to interfere with E2EE, EU privacy rules causing sites to be riddled with popups, money laundering rules making banking increasingly more tedious, power concentrated in the hands of a few nation-state sized tech companies, countries becoming more authoritarian even in the West.

As an anecdotal example, I'm currently living/travelling between various EU countries, where a few years ago I would have expected a great deal of online freedom. Instead I now have to constantly change my VPN exit point to get around various restrictions depending on what site I'm using and what they have decided to block based on location.

If we can't even get these things right in the so-called free democracies of the West, what hope is there for the world in general? I'd like to be optimistic about this, but it's hard to find reasons to be.

demarq• 10 months ago

I feel for you OP. Everyone on here clearly aware that they have no influence over their own government seem to instantly lack empathy for your situation because they saw the word Iran.

It’s all pretty moronic if I’m honest. I really hope things get better for you.

bez00m3• 10 months ago

As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries... The message always goes along the lines of "you're murderer and rapist, we hate you". I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar. I don't have a shortage of people who got convinced that enemies are all around.

So, just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP.

A good service with a strong message that Russian/Iranian is seeing on a regular basis does a lot more good than a service that throws a perfect insult just once. At least if your goal is to actually change something rather than throwing insults.

bakugo• 10 months ago

I still need to find a person who managed to change their political stance after seeing something similar.

The intent was never to change your political stance. It's just plain old hate. Armchair political activists are always looking for "morally correct" excuses to be racist and xenophobic, and "your government did a mean thing so you as a citizen are responsible" is one of their favorites.

jwr2• 10 months ago

just an advice to all wannabe overseas-dictatorship-overthrowers - be nice, try to educate the people, don't make assumptions about person's wrongdoings and awareness based on their IP

I can guarantee that your views would change very quickly if bombs started falling closer to where you sit and killing your friends and people you know.

e-khadem3• 10 months ago

Believe it or not, the 12 day war between Iran and Israel was exactly that, and the reaction of the Iranian people was not as uniform (in either way) as one might guess. You could walk on the streets and see some "Hit them Israel" and other similar writings on the walls (the Iranian people were not exactly pro Israel before the war). And yet people could not sleep due to constant bombardment, they had to follow the evacuation orders by the IDF etc.

bez00m3• 10 months ago

You mean I would hate people more and call them fanatics, terrorists and rapists without knowing anything about them? Do you think that would help?

egorfine• 10 months ago

Except sometimes it works in the other direction. Quite a few of my friends while sheltering from russian bombs in Kharkov still cheered russian efforts to annex Ukraine.

suslik• 10 months ago

I don't think you can guarantee that. Yes, you might have a strong prior in favour of that - most people don't have a propensity to prefer logical and systematic reasoning over strong emotions such as anger or hate - but it's still rather unfair to a person you're talking to to assume that must be the case.

int_19h15• 10 months ago

Yes, when people are badly hurt, they will often lash out in hopes of hurting someone else, using the flimsiest excuses to justify it. It doesn't make it right or a good idea, though.

imiric• 10 months ago

I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily [...] block their users by IPs coming from bad countries

The problem is not with "bad" countries.

The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs, than to filter and allow the small amount of well-behaved clients while blocking the rest. This is especially the case when the company has no commercial presence in these countries.

To be fair, the scenario you describe where countries are blocked purely out of political or personal reasons does exist, and I agree that it's morally wrong, even if it's the prerogative of any individual or company who they want to provide service to. But in my experience the blocking is usually motivated by abuse.

bez00m3• 10 months ago

the scenario you describe where countries are blocked purely out of political or personal reasons does exist

In my experience the reason is one of the following:

1. Following the local jurisdiction. By far the most common one, and one I have least questions for. At least not to the companies who implement this policy - someone over here already posted the consequences of not complying. Big companies often care to say "nothing personal, buddy, strictly business", but nothing more as in the OP's case with Microsoft.

2. Avoiding the attacks, as you said. I definitely agree they exist. And I can imagine every Cloudflare block page I've seen is because of that, but in my experience it's maybe 5-10% of all blockings I experienced.

3. Political activism. What my comment was about. It's always either individuals or small companies. It's always outrageously dumb and pathetic (obviously, except when it comes from an actual victim) and just does the job opposite to the proclaimed intention.

kassner• 10 months ago

The problem is when a large amount of abusive traffic comes from a handful of countries, it's technically easier to block entire IP ranges and ASNs

Abuse is becoming a much bigger problem lately, to the point that even large western providers are getting the same treatment nowadays. More and more I see people talking about banning Hetzner, OVH, DigitalOcean, and at any given time I can see several of their IP addresses in abuse reporting websites (spamhaus, abuseipdb).

What is the future here? I see no reason for those providers to tighten on abusers, given how long they’ve already ignored it. Pretty sure at some point you’ll have to have your own ASN and IP ranges to be able to do anything on the internet.

philipwhiuk2• 10 months ago

As someone who also sees this kind of messages fairly often, I always wondered about companies/individuals who voluntarily (not being forced by law, that's another story) block their users by IPs coming from bad countries...

As a service owner currently looking at adding widescale blocks based on location... it's not a global business, so the downside of blocking an entire country is functionally zero and the upside of easily removing a tonne of compromised machines from the 'can try to DDoS us' pool is noticeable.

behnamoh2• 10 months ago

If someone from Iran wants to do DDoS attacks they probably know enough to change their own IP to somewhere else so your blocking Iranian IPs is basically futile.

elAhmo• 10 months ago

Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.

USA is lucky to be in position where others are too afraid to apply this reasoning to them, knowing they do literally the same with their closest ally.

squigz2• 10 months ago

It would be interesting to see someone try to use the Internet while blocking all American IPs

phendrenad22• 10 months ago

You mean like the entire country of China?

yekanchi• 10 months ago

the people are not fundamentally far from their government. this is true for U.S where they elected Donald Trump or Israel that elected Netanyahu.

for Iranians it's the same. and it's ground truth.

the sanctions actually are designed to push the people of Iran to change their mind and overthrow their gov. it's easier than starting a full-blown war against Iranian that will cause damage or kill U.S soldiers' lives. the sanctions are deliberately implemented to target the people and force them to follow the will of the whom established them.

int_19h15• 10 months ago

"the people" are not a singular entity in Iran anymore so than they are in US.

Bukhmanizer• 10 months ago

When do sanctions apply to websites? I assume static web pages don’t need to filter IPs. Do all websites with a user need to filter on IP?

megamix• 10 months ago

Dude there are crimes everywhere. Here we're fighting chat control and other surveillance mechanisms being implemented. I don't think there's a "neutral ground" to be found - just allies and enemies.

matips2• 10 months ago

Work as design. Ali Khamenei is YOUR, not USA leader. His confrontation politic is done in behalf of YOU and he mange YOUR efforts and resources (ex. taxes). If you want to work with democratic country your country have to change Iran political system.

tryauuum4• 10 months ago

while this is true, it's not nice to hear it from a person who would never rise up himself in the same situation

NullCascade• 10 months ago

It is actually illegal for EU companies and organizations to boycott Iran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blocking_statute

The EU has since the 1990s gone out of its way to support countries like Iran and Cuba against US/Israeli economic sanctions.

somezero• 10 months ago

This is not just a funny joke, but also timely given the recent sanctions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_sanctions_agains...

eesmith• 10 months ago

Do I understand right that if I use a cafe's free wifi, and the cafe's suspiciously cheap service provider routes the connection through Iran so it appears as if my connection is coming from that country, then GitLab and perhaps other companies will ban my account?

heyheyhouhou• 10 months ago

Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.

I always find amusing how the west always blames the people of the rivals "iranians", the "chinese", etc but when something is wrong with their side they blame an entity to detach themselves "the american government", "this administration", "nazi germany", etc

varjag5• 10 months ago

Uh the whole concept of collective responsibility was first applied to Germans in the aftermath of WW2.

johncolanduoni2• 10 months ago

The occupying powers very much did not assign collective responsibility to Germans after WW2. Material reparations were massively reduced in scope compared to WW1 (and the norms of the previous century), and the Allies actually poured substantial resources into Germany’s reconstruction (far in excess of the reparations).

Also, collective punishment is literally as old as written history. I’m not sure if there are writings that provide a coherent moral theory of why it’s acceptable that you could call “collective responsibility” from those times, but it was the norm for thousands of years of warfare.

Keirmot2• 10 months ago

This comment is disingenuous.

In everyday speech, people don’t carefully separate “the people” from “the state.” A French person talking about the U.S. usually says les Américains. A German talking about the French will just say die Franzosen — or, if they’re in the mood to tease, die Froschfresser. It’s only in news or diplomatic language that you see “the American government,” “the French government,” or “London” when referring to Britain.

The phrase “this administration” is mostly used domestically, by citizens talking about their own rulers. In Portugal you’d hear "este governo é uma merda", and in Spain the exact same sentiment — give or take a letter or two.

And “Nazi Germany” is only used when distinguishing regimes — Weimar vs. Federal Republic, Estado Novo vs. the Portuguese Republics, the French Fourth vs. the Fifth Republic, and so on.

gruez3• 10 months ago

In everyday speech, people don’t carefully separate “the people” from “the state.” ...

That might make sense if the email stopped at "Iranian IPs", but it continued with "... due to your decision ..." (emphasis mine). That makes it sound like the author is personally responsible.

boruto• 10 months ago

Apparently https://www.grepular.com/ is from UK. Wonder how feels if people start blaming him for colonialism.

Govt proscribing access by law is something, but I cannot imagine a guy going out of the way to put ipblocks.

honzabe3• 10 months ago

This discussion leans against sanctions, and I feel a bit uneasy about this. There are some good arguments, but still... can I try to offer a different point of view?

I grew up in a country occupied by Russians. I really feel for the Ukrainians. Currently, there seems to be a social contract between Putin and middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg - they will let him bomb Ukrainian civilians, as long as he shields them from getting really hurt by that war. They can continue living pretty comfortably, as long as they go along with it. To me, this just feels wrong. Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience. But I believe that ultimately, citizens have the responsibility for what their country is doing. And if what their country is doing is destroying another country, I am OK with making them feel a bit of heat.

I don't know that much about Iran, but the part I know is that they indeed make drones that pound Ukrainians, including their schools and hospitals. Do I feel certain sympathy for Iranian commoners, who might not make those drones voluntarily? Sure. If I were in their place, I would probably not dare to resist, and I would make those drones. But I feel more sympathy with Ukrainians. And if anything could be done to make it harder for Iranians to make those drones, we should try it. Even if it's unlikely to succeed. Even if it makes the lives of innocent ordinary citizens harder. I hope that if I were an Iranian, I would at least understand that.

isaacremuant2• 10 months ago

Your whole post is war propaganda to justify how "the enemy" needs to be blocked and attacked.

Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.

Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.

honzabe3• 10 months ago

Analyze who have perpetrated most invasions ("military operations" if you like euphemisms) in the last 40 years and you'll be surprised who you'd need to "block" given your logic.

I have. It was Russia. They are indeed blocked and I am not surprised.

Of course, you won't block yourself because it's convenient to be a jingoist when it doesn't affect you.

No, I won't block myself because my little country has not invaded anyone. If you are assuming I am an American, I am not.

chupasaurus• 10 months ago

middle-class Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg

2 prevalent groups of which are retired and people who moved there to make their ends meet, which will be complete around the retirement age.

Yes, it is hard to change anything in a dictatorship. I know that from personal experience.

How many changes you did under dictators with actual armies, spy networks, chemical and nuclear weapons?

int_19h15• 10 months ago

Let's say some random Russian in Moscow decides that they are not okay with it. What would you have them do, exactly? It's not even that the government is oppressive and will crack down, but an even bigger problem is that this oppressive government genuinely does have majority support of the population (as you note yourself!) - so what can they do even? And if the answer really is nothing, then how can they be responsible?

Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".

honzabe3• 10 months ago

so what can they do even? And if the answer really is nothing, then how can they be responsible?

I think I need to clarify what I mean by "responsibility". Many people confuse "you are responsible" with "you did this" or "it is your fault", but this is not exactly true. Let's say I am an alcoholic. I believe alcoholism is an affliction (some people might not agree with that, but that's another discussion - let's ignore that for now and assume it is an affliction). Therefore, I believe it is not my fault that I am an alcoholic - It was just bad luck that I was born that way. Yet, it is my responsibility to control my alcoholism. If I hurt someone while under the influence, I have to bear the consequences. Some might argue it is not entirely fair, and I would agree. But in my view, it is the closest we can get to fair. I have a better chance of controlling my alcoholism than some random person whose kids I might have killed while driving under the influence.

Alcoholism is an extreme example, but if you think about it for a while, being responsible for something that is not your fault is common. I see Russians responsible in the same way. Citizens of a state share collective responsibility for what their state is doing. And the fact that an individual might not be able to do anything about it does not change that.

Your second argument - that this is acceptable collateral damage - makes more sense, but it requires demonstrating that there is some connection between the specific measures and "making it harder".

Why? This is not a court of law, where you have to prove guilt to inflict punishment. Sanctions are not a punishment (which is also why I do not like arguments about collective punishment used in this discussion and elsewhere). They are an attempt to pressure a state to stop causing harm. And if that attempt is based on somewhat reasonable assumptions (which, in the case of Russia and Iran, I think it is), I am fine with it.

And let's not forget it is a relatively peaceful attempt. Nazi Germany was "persuaded" by literally destroying them to the point of unconditional capitulation. And many people who had nothing to do with Hitler died. In an ideal world, they would not have, because it was not their fault and they could not do anything, but the problem is that we only have very crude ways of dissuading states from causing harm.

admiralrohan• 10 months ago

I always wondered why people care so much about data. Now I can understand why. Thanks for sharing.

____mr____• 10 months ago

Clear example that hosting (github, websites, etc) as well as social media being US based is a form of soft power that the US has which largely goes unchallenged.

While I do agree with the sanctions against Iran for their aid to Russia in their aggression towards Ukraine, It's not like the US is completely innocent from funding or arming aggressors across the globe. How can the software world be mobilized to sanction the US for this? It can't and it won't because lots of the people in tech within the anglosphere have a vested interest in the US maintaining its power

iamshs• 10 months ago

Hit me in the feels. There used to be an amateur Russian beatmaker who I used to follow, it was so sad to see him drop off similarly. His paypal was cut off. I used to watch his IG lives a lot, loved the way he used to develop his beats. Very novel.

Ylpertnodi• 10 months ago

Hit me in the feels.

Like burying a child feels, or your beatmaker got drafted?

_trampeltier• 10 months ago

If it's illegal to to do bussines with Iran. Can you buy a Windows licence in Iran?

mvdtnz3• 10 months ago

Do sometime about the incredibly evil regime in your country before moaning about sanctions. They exist for a very very good reason.

constantcrying4• 10 months ago

"I am not responsible for the actions of my government, but you, the people who ban me, are responsible for the actions of your government, who made it illegal to transact with me."

Your country is sanctioned. You are asking people to put their own freedom at stake so that you can have a Notion account.

Iran is supplying Russia with drones to attack Ukraine. The sanctions against Iran might be hurting people who do not deserve it, but they aren't some unreasonable act of aggression and you are complaining about your Notion account?

redbell• 10 months ago

That was a difficult and frustrating reading! I never imagined that sanctions could hit individuals this hard, especially on the digital side. You get banned from outside and blocked from inside. You can read about The Internet situation inside Iran here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33025954

There was a lot of interesting stuff went into the article:

1. Microsoft:

Back when I was a student, I got access to the Microsoft Imagine, and as a result, I got access to the Microsoft Store as a developer.

Then:

Microsoft deleted my app, my developer account, and all those comments on my app supporting me and suggesting ideas on how to improve the program.. but I assume it's because of the sanctions.

Here, I got a novice question: Knowing this individual is from a sanctioned country, Why you are allowing him in the first place to put a lot of work to build an app but, after having some success, you destroyed him entirely?!

Also, suggesting ideas on how to improve the program after deleting my account is one of the most hilarious things I have ever read. It is a strong indicator that these emails are just templates built automatically with no soul or human touch. Yes, you heard it right: you are just a row in a table!.. but you still manage to have a PRIMARY_KEY!

2. Notion:

Since It has been suspended permanently, there's still no option to get it back even by going outside those countries. Sorry for the Inconvenience. Take care.

Same as above! Why letting me build a base of data then one day, you delete it permanently without prior notice or the ability to export it then you apologize for the Inconvenience and tell me to take care of myself!

3. Mike Cardwell:

I read hackernews on a daily basis

Oh, this made me relief a little bit! I hope Hacker News is neither being banned in any country nor blocking traffic from any country.

Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.

Blaming then punishing an ordinary citizen for arming a foreign country to kill civilians without clear evidence is so dumb.

Also, this reminds me of this post entitled Namecheap: Russia Service Termination (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30504812):

   Unfortunately, due to the Russian regime's war crimes and human rights violations in Ukraine, we will no longer be providing services to users registered in Russia.

4. GitHub:

However, later, GitHub announced that github is now available in Iran

Good News! read here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648585

5. TIL

TIL about this 451 Unavailable For Legal Reasons status code. I won't ever return this code for my websites, everybody, from everywhere, is welcome :)

Finally, I have a dream.. the dream to live to the day where a true open internet sees the light where the entire world have unrestricted access to the same online resources.

zoobab• 10 months ago

The current internet relies on censorable technologies (ip, dns, http, etc...).

Let's hope the next gen protocols will make censorship impossible, especially by law.

moralestapia• 10 months ago

"Sorry for the inconvenience. Take care."

Damn ... :/

jwr2• 10 months ago

This is a complicated subject. I am a SaaS founder/owner and I run into these issues regularly. Everything below is not specifically about Iran (in fact, most of my thinking is inspired by events from recent years caused by another country), but still applies.

First, there is the law, and many jurisdictions forbid me from providing any services to individuals and/or businesses in certain countries. See other comments here for details, but these are serious matters.

Second, there is my moral beliefs. I go through life trying to draw a moral line and if something is beyond that line, I take action. Your line might be different. You might be a forever-whataboutist, avoiding taking any action and always saying "but what about X or Y?", trying to point out that I am inconsistent in my actions or beliefs. Well I don't subscribe to whataboutism and I believe it is the cause of much of today's world problems. So I refuse to provide service to some countries, because I cannot stand idly while genocide happens. If your country is involved in genocide, target killing of civilians, or actively helps another country to do so, I do not want to deal with you.

Some will say that individuals are not responsible for actions of their countries. I disagree. For better or worse, the passport you hold brings with it certain benefits and obligations, and ties you to a country. That's how we agreed to run this world. If your country commits horrific crimes, it's time to take action: oppose the authorities, escape the country, apply for asylum, renounce your citizenship. Yes, I know all these are unpleasant and dangerous. So are the bombs your country is dropping onto my friends right now. Taking the "but individuals are not responsible" stance means that I have to watch as some people from countries that are killing my friends live well in safe places, standing on the sidelines and waiting things out, while keeping the option to return to their country once things blow over. Writing blog posts about the finer points of modern Apple design while people get raped and murdered by the army of their country. I don't feel that is right. There must be consequences if your country commits atrocities. Don't like the consequences? Don't let your country get to the point that it commits atrocities.

nenenejej• 10 months ago

Iranian IPs are blocked here, due to your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.

Love how people in glass houses launch these stones.

andrepd2• 10 months ago

I came to the realization that Microsoft deleted my app, my developer account, and all those comments on my app supporting me and suggesting ideas on how to improve the program. I tried to contact the support and email whoever I could, but I was ghosted.

I think this is the most insidious part. These companies (on which you often depend for very important things, whether you want or not) will just ban you and delete your stuff, or even shadowban you, without (1) so much as an explanation beyond the Orwellian "you have violated our terms and conditions", and without (2) any possibility of appeal or customer support whatsoever.

This goes for google, discord, reddit, YouTube, github, notion, etc etc etc.

dustedcodes2• 10 months ago

This works as designed. Sanctions like these are meant to piss off the people living in terrorist states so that you either rise up and rid yourself of all terrorist roots or you accept that the rest of the world doesn’t want to play ball with terrorists or terrorist enablers.

tryauuum4• 10 months ago

I don't know. If I would run "docker run hello-world" and got and error "403" because I'm from Iran, I would be more pissed at US for making my life harder.

---

unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian. For years London was welcoming russian oligarhs with their stolen money. Putin was invited to Finland even after 2014 invasion of Crimea. But you fuckers decided to ipmlement sanctions only after the 2022. So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine. Absolutely disgusting. Supposedly Finland continues to buy russian minerals still, but as a russian I cannot cross the border with Finland, even if I have a visa.

dustedcodes2• 10 months ago

unrelated but jesus christ I'm so pissed at west as a russian So if I sell my appartment in Russia and want to transfer money to Europe now I would need to prove this is not money I pillaged from Ukraine.

Just stay at home then, whats the problem? If you are so pissed with the West then why is it a problem that you cannot come here? Just stay in Russia then.

int_19h15• 10 months ago

Have you ever risen up against an authoritarian government yourself?

I find that a lot of Westerners seem to have what I can only charitably describe as "romantic notions" of an uprising. Americans perhaps the most because of their national mythology around the Independence War.

GardenLetter27• 10 months ago

It really sucks, the US should focus on liberating these people - in both Iran and Cuba the majority of people want to be free, and it would be easy to liberate them.

dvdkon3• 10 months ago

How? The US has a pretty bad record of "liberating" middle-eastern countries by military force.

michalpleban• 10 months ago

Living in Europe, I don't give a damn about US sanctions. However, I block traffic from Iran on all my servers for the simple reason that almost all attacks on my website (and if you run a semi-popular website, you get attacked on a daily basis) come from Iran, Russia or China.

I am very sorry that this kind of action affects you personally, as I am sure you have nothing to do with these attacks. However, filtering out Iranian, Russian and Chinese traffic in its entirety is the only way to protect my server from the majority of DoS and hacking attempts.

mfiro• 10 months ago

One of my coworkers, a network specialist, compares IP restrictions to a garden fence. They’re enough to stop casual passersby, but anyone determined will find a way over or around it.

kelnos15• 10 months ago

The reality, though, is that the majority of attack attempts are by casual passersby.

No, this method isn't going to stop a determined attacker that is specifically targeting you, but that doesn't mean blocking the lower-effort stuff has no value.

dayvster• 10 months ago

the comments on the gist are rough. Must we saturate every aspect of our lives with Politics?

Yes it's annoying that people disabled your access because of your location, but at the end of the day it is what it is. US companies get hefty fines if they do business with Iran.

bubblethink• 10 months ago

A friend of mine, originally from Iran but now a Canadian citizen, was stopped at the border during a recent visit by CBP. They interrogated him, scanned his phone, found some EE paper, insinuated that he makes bombs and is a terrorist, and sent him back to Canada. The US' treatment of Iranians is quite appalling.

m101• 10 months ago

To the comments that talk about Iranian politics: Iran under a monarchy will do well, perhaps even limited democracy. The monarchies of the Arab world seem to be doing well, and not by chance. Democracy alone is not good for any country in the long run imo.

amai2• 10 months ago

Jeah, democracies are for loosers. What did democrats ever do for us, apart from aqueducts?

zerof1l• 10 months ago

I personally know a woman from Iran. She has a PhD in Data Science. She works and lives in the EU. Her mindset is that of an educated European person.

She does not support the current Iranian government, and neither do most of the people in Iran, according to her. But publicly expressing disagreement in Iran could have you disappear. That's why people are afraid to protest and speak out.

Regarding sanctions, it's not that hard to find and buy products from Iran. At least in the EU. What happens is neighboring countries import raw material from Iran, then put a label "Made in Pakistan", for example, and sell it. But those who know, can easily find and buy things like Iranian rice and spices.

ktosobcy• 10 months ago

So... it would be the best for you (and the rest of the world) to actually decouple from the USA and it's BigTech (and thus from their "pliceman of the world" mentality…)

chuliomartinez• 10 months ago

It is time that democracies stop doing business with autocratic regimes. Not just some of them, because if everything is manufactured in china, which keeps doing business with iran and russia, it seems pointless.

At this point it should be obvious to everyone, that western money is (transitively) keeping all the worst regimes alive.

People stopped buying south African stuff, as an apartheid boycott, can we get some china boycott going?

sarthakdash• 10 months ago

Funny how there are no such sanctions and ban for the Isreal and its people, whose army is actively committing a genocide in Gaza.

NooneAtAll3• 10 months ago

simple reason to not trust foreign companies, especially american ones

Kuyawa• 10 months ago

UPDATE users SET inactive = true WHERE country = 'Iran'

That way you don't lose their data just in case sanctions are lifted

maxlin• 10 months ago

due to your decision to arm Russia with drones

This is an absolutely mental take assigning blame on every civilian of a country. Sadly in probably his worst take, Linus Torvalds also said something in these lines while banning all Russian developers. While the action could be justified, this attitude is never reasonable, and I say that as a Finn with the same opinion about Putin's war of aggression as Linus has.

When a service drops a customer for _any_ reason, even if it was the customers own fault, it should become the absolute norm and a the minimum thing that the service would trigger the same thing they'd do when if the user triggered a manual data export off the service. Even for something relatively simple, like for example I didn't log in to my Spotify account for x amount of years and they disabled my account. The only way I could get my collected albums back was through support, and if I had been unlucky, they'd just deleted all my data.

This is NOT something that should be the user's responsibility. There is no norm for automating data exports off services, hell even Google makes you go through menus every time. Maybe time for EU to be useful again?

runjake• 10 months ago

The worst thing we could do is punish the Iranian people and remove their access to tools that help their freedom and dignity.

Their government, quite literally, does not represent them, their views, nor their interests.

If you want to fix “the Iran problem”, help their people as much as possible.

matteogauthier• 10 months ago

Thanks for sharing OP. The “just leave Iran” replies reflect a lack of openness to other cultures. Leaving your country isn’t just logistics, it’s being rooted where you were born. And there’s nothing wrong with that, who are we to judge someone for where they come from?

grishka• 10 months ago

If anyone is curious what happens if you open that website from a Russian IP:

Russian IPs are blocked here, due to your unjust and unprovoked War against Ukraine. You are responsible for the rape, kidnap and massacre of innocent civilians.

Which is to me an absolutely bonkers statement, clearly made by someone who has never even tried to research anything about my country. Someone who was clearly born into a democratic society and has lived their whole life in it. And has probably never traveled to countries with oppressive regimes and never made any friends there.

It's nothing but performative bullshit.

jollyllama• 10 months ago

eyesguard is awesome! OP rocks.

random3• 10 months ago

The reality is simply a mirror of the same arguments on OPs side.

Just like it's not the people it's the government and their policies, there, it's not the people, but the government and the policies here.

I remember having compliance trainings that explicitly spelled out sanctioned countries. They are being enforced by compliance and legal departments in every company. There's nothing personal on either side here.

EmiDub• 10 months ago

Can someone give me an explanation for why Mike Cardwell, who lives in the UK, blocks Iranian IPs for “your decision to arm Russia with drones so that they can indiscriminately massacre civilians.” but does not block US or UK IPs for their decision to arm Israel?

The answer would seem to me to be racism – he values Ukrainian lives more than Palestinians and considers non-white citizens in non-democratic countries responsible for their country’s actions, but white citizens of democracies innocent.

behnamoh2• 10 months ago

Yes I do get the feeling that some of these sentiments ultimately goes back to covert racism.

andreyvit2• 10 months ago

I’m not sure if you’re actually asking or not, but in case you want to hear an answer, it’s because Israel is considered to be defending itself after a horrible attack, not that dissimilar to Ukraine really in some people’s view (me included). This goes back to a worldview where residents of a country share a portion of the blame for their country’s actions. This view is not universal, but has a certain mindshare (again, myself included), and if you imagine it fair for residents of a place to share the fate caused by the cumulative actions of that place, it’s not a big stretch to see how Israel’s actions can be considered natural and just by some, and so can the sanctions against residents of Iran and Russia.

sporkxrocket2• 10 months ago

The vast majority of the world including the ICC and the UN does not consider Israel to be defending itself. By your own logic, Israelis are culpable for the genocide and land theft committed by their government.

justsomehnguy• 10 months ago

Looks like you missed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45259553

arunc2• 10 months ago

Very sad to see this. Most educated Iranians I've met hate Islam and their government that supports its extreme ideologies. I hope the people in this world develop the sense of morality without associating it with any religion or culture, for that's the true purpose of being compassionate humans.

beej713• 10 months ago

Indeed, all of the Muslims I've met hate extremist, violent ideologies.

arunc2• 10 months ago

The last time I came across the name Beej, there used to be a book/article called Beej's guide for network socket programming. If that's you, thanks for everything!

beej713• 10 months ago

I appreciate this very human submission to HN. There are a lot of good people in this world living under a government they don't agree with.

amai2• 10 months ago

Why only Iran? Also add Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, North Korea and Afghanistan.

https://the-decoder.com/anthropic-bans-companies-majority-co...

uncleJoe• 10 months ago

What astonishes me is the ease of judgement - who is good and who is not. Everyone is absolutely sure that country A is a doing a RIGHT (tm) thing, while the country B is absolute evil. You have no idea about real reasons, real facts and real feelings except those you've seen on tv or heard from your own bubble. You are so smart, honest and independent that it smells. "Of course YOU have to ... and ... and ... I know better than you guys. Why you are so stupid and don't end this?" It is so easy to rule other countries and tell them what they have to do, totally ignoring real problems that lead to situation. It is so easy to be right, to judge and to discuss things you have no fucking clue. And every person that is saying something contradictory to your opinion is a stupid guy that is brainwashed. They are all brainwashed! Their brain is destroyed by propaganda! Poor, stupid people! We need to bring some democracy to them. Probably. If they do not have some nukes or it would be too expensive. Anyway, thank you for reading.

elevation• 10 months ago

Even after leaving Iran, you still face many similar problems. [...] like having a bank account or simply opening a personal account on different services—you’ll encounter problems.

When you grant access/resources to expats of a hostile country, you have to limit them as if they were agents of the foreign country. Even if they like your country, you make them vulnerable to threats of torture/imprisonment of their loved ones back home.

dzhiurgis• 10 months ago

There's some grade³ irony when people with daily school shootings tell others to sort out their regime.

AfterHIA• 10 months ago

That's kind of why FROM users WHERE location = 'Orem, Utah" AND "Charlie Kirk"

(...)

rikima_• 10 months ago

I guess that's why Anthropic's CEO is universally hated in some places.

HocusLocus• 10 months ago

Now do Cuba. The American Mafia was running Cuba by 1959 because, casinos and American tourism. Fidel Castro's revolution was genuine and did reflect the desire of most Cubans when it kicked the US Mafia out. The mafia expressed interest in ousting Castro and getting their casinos back. Bay of Pigs was a failed CIA+private mission whose motive was america:demorcacy:'communism' to which I add :mob. Las Vegas was their backup cope.

Then in 1962 suddenly another motive was added :USSR-missiles. The US blockade of Russian warships probably loaded with ballistic missiles on their way to construction sites in Cuba, was the closest brink of war yet. My Dad (ARMY) was on alert and packed to go.

With that resolved and no USSR missiles in Cuba the working motive for opposition fell back on (because Castro, Communism) and its economy was hobbled for years until neutral worldwide investors besides the USSR established ties. To this day Cuba is still on the edge with the lines shifting back and forth.

As has Iran since the Shah dynasty ended and American hostages were taken. So Cuba and Iran have lines stretching back into the distance. Probably you and I are young and it all seems so ancient. But Iran is a wealthy country now and (like us and the CIA) and it is now 'on our watch' to make sure money is not being funneled into the wrong places.

This nuclear thing annoys me but I'm a 'radical'. Aside from sweetheart deals and that 'other' country the US gave The Bomb by supplying their initial fissile material... since the USSR split anyone with MONEY has been able to acquire 1,2,3,+ bombs if they want them. "So and so is two weeks from having a Bomb" is generic Boomer slop to stoke fear and justify anything. And by all means if you have uranium, centrifuge uranium. And build out nuclear power.

Don't reply with an answer and place yourself in the crosshairs. But think on or find out for yourself, what number between 3% and 99% was Iran aiming for? If the number is on the higher side don't think in terms of [stupid] nuclear war, think in terms of money being wasted and having to deal with the most sordid people in the world to sell it. A bad direction. Things like this are both funny and sad, and hint at a world that might have turned out differently, better ( https://web.archive.org/web/20150518180531/http://en.wikiped... ). Time to revisit roads we had not taken.

Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

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