Is it racist? I think it is.
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@EddieJennings said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error.
I haven't used Amazon CloudFront, but have you confirmed that configuration is correct? Do you have any way to verify if there was any kind of burst of traffic that may have triggered some kind of policy that would cause traffic to be dropped?
On the question of racism, I would follow the technical issue to a potential policy issue. Then see if the policy was created to somehow allow and drop traffic based off of assuming the immutable physical characteristic (race) of the sender. My thought process wouldn't start with "traffic has been configured to be dropped because of a racist policy."
Yes, its trivial to confirm and it is a persistent issue living in a hispanic country. We have teams throughout Latin America with computers in the US and it's absolutely no effort to determine when the only factor that makes you blocked is "hispanic nation" and nothing else.
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I think it needs to be said, blatant and obvious racism should never be defended. I understand the goals in trying to find some loophole to excuse horrible, detestable Americans doing what so many do. But that's not really ethical. Racism is always wrong, it's not appropriate to attempt to hide it or excuse it. I realize that racism is often pointed to in cases where it clearly doesn't exist. But this is a well known, inexcusable bit of racism (it happens to Europeans too, btw, it's not only about skin colour but also national identify, language, culture...) for which there is no viable, ethical (or in many cases legal) reason. Blocking real customers makes no business sense. Geo IP blocks provide no security, but do lose business. There are no regulations, security or business cases that I've ever had presented that would allow or excuse any level of geo blocking let alone broad blocking.
This is racism. That's black and white. THe question is only... why is it so okay to allow it?
I'll call out one company that lost a bit of business to it. xByte did this and flat out said they had no interest in customers that would ever travel outside the US and didn't care if it tarnished their reputation to appear to have failed as a technology company to anyone who did. They back peddled after losing customers and, more importantly, vendors, but we pointed out to them that it was STATED by their vendors that they were fired over blatant racism and while they claimed it not to be true, they offered no motivation to the contrary (and since none could exist, that makes sense.)
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Race refers to the categorization of human beings into groups based on physical attributes such as skin color, hair texture, and facial features. Geographic restrictions, on the other hand, pertain to limits or boundaries set on certain areas or locations.
This is an abhorrent right wing rhetoric that has been used to gerrymander and isolate poor, minority based neighborhoods. It is unthinkable to use this as logic. Geographic restrictions do NOT work with national boundaries, that's a known falsehood. And it is known that national boundaries have racial generalities.
You are exposing the point we are making.
Imagine if the blockage was based on "countries that speak English". And we tried to say "but not EVERYONE is white."
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Living outside the USA has shown me how many supposed 'IT Security Policies' are in my opinion, racist.
I got this today:
403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
The Amazon CloudFront distribution is configured to block access from your country. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.
Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: zomv8JAx_0HrRCvqqrBVKdUVY0WYlrp6F0BhpVut-NLG060J2fKC-w==- I happen to be in Nicaragua right now, and I think it would be hard to argue that there are a lot of Nicaraguan hackers (In other words we aren't talking originating from China or Russia here).
- Do IT staff really think that the hackers they should worry about aren't familiar with VPN's or other ways of spoofing their IP or location?
This happens from time to time and today it I guess annoyed me more than it normally does.
Thoughts?
Not sure what race has to do with geographic restrictions. I'd say it more-so has to do with laws, regulatory, and other such things:
- legal and regulatory compliance
- export controls
- licensing
- infrastructure / performance concerns
- economic considerations
- fraud/security concerns
- content sensitivities
- strategic business decisions
- taxation and financial regulations
- local partnerships or agreements
- network abuse (sure there's one single aspect of your hacking point)
- language and support concerns
- etc.
Well, when you block by large racial regions, and all of those other things don't apply, it's pretty strongly definitely about race.
None of those other things can be used in conjunction with geo-ip blocking. I'd say the opposite... I don't understand how you can mention those other things given that it doesn't work for that. Other than race and/or nationality (which are deeply tied) there's no other effective reason for geo blocking.
@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
What's your evidence to support the site blocking is racially motivated, and not, lets say, regulatory or otherwise motivated?
Because no regulation anywhere, ever is supported by geo blocking. That never qualifies for any regulation.
It's not racially motivated, really, ever.
Example: Hulu... that's not really available anywhere outside the US. Why? Certainly not racially motivated... but licensing I'm guessing? (regulatory)
Netflix has different content available in different countries. Why? Certainly not racially motivated. Definitely about licensing agreements. (regulatory)
Likely aren't available at all in some countries. Why? Certainly not racially motivated. It's all about licensing/legal/regulatory reasons. Race has nothing at all to do with it. -
In east Texas where my nieces went to high school, their schools were predominantly Vietnamese. And magically, those districts got different, and fewer, resources than neighboring districts with a much higher ratio of white students. There's lots of excuses made, but the bottom line is, what your race TENDS to be determines what services you TEND to get. Most racism doesn't have a DNA test. Most is done by targeting trends that mostly hurt one race and minimally hurt another. That's what racism looks like. In fact, that's almost always what it looks like. Individual situations, people attacking one single individual, isn't racism. That's just... being mean or whatever. It's when the attack is against a group, at least a small one. More than one person. It's not about them as a person, but about a group that they do not control their membership in.
If you want to be racist against hispanics, sure, many whites and blacks will get swept up in that. But they are an itty bitty percentage within the greater group. What's the non-hispanic, non-mixed racial numbers in north america south of the US border... 2% maybe? Mexico doesn't even recognize anything but mixed as an official race. And most of those people could, if they wanted to, immigrate somewhere and identify differently and never be discovered as having come from a predominantly hispanic nation.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Example: Hulu... that's not really available anywhere outside the US. Why? Certainly not racially motivated... but licensing I'm guessing? (regulatory)
I actually talked to them when I moved outside of the US. They don't just block their streaming service. They block their customer service, violating the law. They BREACH regulations in doing that. I actually had the Hulu rep complain that it was racist that only people actively in America could cancel their accounts since you couldn't even get service AND your only recourse was reporting credit card fraud.
Nice try, that's not licensing or regulation. That's flat our racism in every sense. Blocking the stream only, but providing a notice that the IP is detected outside a license zone isn't geo blocking, that's geo informing. They actually block and in doing so, break the law. So, yes, good point but not to the one you thought you were making.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Netflix has different content available in different countries. Why? Certainly not racially motivated. Definitely about licensing agreements. (regulatory)
RIght, not blocked. Netflix works here and they make it clear that they provide content by "area detected." It's open and clear and you are never blocked.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Likely aren't available at all in some countries. Why? Certainly not racially motivated. It's all about licensing/legal/regulatory reasons. Race has nothing at all to do with it.
Do you have any examples of geo blocking or are you grasping at straws only? These are all things we can use here.
Likewise, tons of websites I use now detect my location and force me to use Spanish. I hate that, but it's not blocking. It's an attempt to customize services for what they wrongfully assume is best for me.
I also constantly get sent to UK versions of online stores when I clearly indicated American ones. It's foolish and myopic, but it's not geo blocking nor obviously racist.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Nice try, that's not licensing or regulation. That's flat our racism in every sense.
The same is true in Canada. How are they racist against Canadians and not US citizens? Are US citizens and Canadians not of the same race?
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
It's not racially motivated, really, ever.
That's quite a statement. Do you have a single example of a geo blocked resource that has a viable reason to be blocked? One that actually makes money or satisfies a regulatory requirement?
I've been talking about this for years. I've talked to companies that have done this. I've never once had someone actually try to show it wasn't racist. Only people who got upset getting caught being racist. But none ever provided a logical reason for risking losing business or just being bad people.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Nice try, that's not licensing or regulation. That's flat our racism in every sense.
The same is true in Canada. How are they racist against Canadians and not US citizens? Are US citizens and Canadians not of the same race?
The same is true in Canada what? That it isn't about racism or geo blocking and the example has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion? Yes, in that sense, the lack of applicability also applies to Canada, China, wherever you like.
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The discussion is about geo blocking. The use of IP to stop network traffic with no notification or essentially none (you've been blocked is still blocking.) It is NOT the use of IP to modifying which services are provided or how. You can make a great argument that that is or is not racist and I think most people would agree it is racist but within an acceptable range and not the fault of the vendor mentioned but of the licensee. But your examples of Netflix isn't blocking and isn't racist. Hulu is blocking and is racist. Black and white, night and day. The two examples are wholly different in practice, in implementation, in intent. Polar opposites.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
That it isn't about racism or geo blocking and the example has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion?
It 100% has to do with the discussion.
Hulu is blocked in Canada just as it is in Nicaragua. Not because of racial reasons. Hulu is blocked in Canada, specifically, due to licensing rights and agreements. That is not racially motivated at all. It's legal.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Hulu is blocked in Canada just as it is in Nicaragua. Not because of racial reasons. Hulu is blocked in Canada, specifically, due to licensing rights and agreements. That is not racially motivated at all.
YOu are telling me that Hulu's website doesn't load in Canada and when you go to it it acts like the services doesn't exist and if you try to cancel your CC payments they don't allow you to stop payment while also violating their contractual agreement to provide service? That feels... pretty unlikely but I guess it is plausible.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
That it isn't about racism or geo blocking and the example has nothing whatsoever to do with the discussion?
It 100% has to do with the discussion.
Hulu is blocked in Canada just as it is in Nicaragua. Not because of racial reasons. Hulu is blocked in Canada, specifically, due to licensing rights and agreements. That is not racially motivated at all. It's legal.
However, if you are telling me that race can never include "American" then you are getting into a quagmire. As someone who grew up in the US, I have zero "identifies as American", I identify as Swiss/Dutch/Scottish and always have. However, being European American (A European born in America) I get constant flak from "Americans" who say anyone born in America is American by race and it is a wideheld belief that the time has passed for Americans to maintain racial identity ties to their home countries. I don't agree, but it's a STRONG racial belief in America. To the point that both the US and Mexico generally consider your "Mexican-ness" to be stripped from you if you go a generation in the US and that you turn into American and can't claim to be Mexican anymore (not true, just both sides say that a lot.)
To say that Canadians are the "same race" as Americans, while in many ways you are right, isn't a universal, or even close to universal, racial belief and as long as huge swaths of people see them as two races, an act of one race against the other on the basis of nothing other than their assumed race remains... racist.
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It's worth pointing out, though, that Canada and the US have different racial makeups of their white populations as well. Canada is far more "white" than the US is. To the point that until the mid-20th century, not until the white washing of WW2, Americans weren't considered broadly white while Canadians were. That white Americans are considered white is a relatively new thing because Brits and Celts were traditionally considered white while Germans were not. Only after Hitler did groups like Germans, Dutch, French, Italian, etc. become considered white and not for decades later before Arabs, Jews, Spaniards, Portugese, etc. get added to the white listings.
So traditionally the US and Canada have actually had a strong racial divide. One that the Germans counted on in the war to divide us, which they miscalculated. But the risk was real. With tons of Germans, Dutch and Italians in the US, and mostly British and French in Canada, the differences do exist.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
In east Texas where my nieces went to high school, their schools were predominantly Vietnamese. And magically, those districts got different, and fewer, resources than neighboring districts with a much higher ratio of white students.
Aren't school taxes (funding) based on the assessed value of the homes and property in a given school district? Did neighboring districts contain more higher value or overall higher value in property/homes?
I have no idea the areas you are referring to. You'd have to look them up to see how much each school district collects from property/home taxes. Then see how much of that the schools in that district each get accordingly.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
Aren't school taxes (funding) based on the assessed value of the homes and property in a given school district? Did neighboring districts contain more higher value or overall higher value in property/homes?
Right. In racist areas, that's how it is done. That specifically correlates poor immigrants with low income schools to perpetuate the divide. That's a perfect example of how easily excused, but obviously racist mechanisms work. We all know that schools should have equal educational resources regardless of property value. Yet we don't do that in practice. We use parents' income as the guiding force in the quality of education we provide.
It is ignored because you can say "but poor whites live there too". And that's the standard racist trope. Because while they CAN, and a few DO, it's not the majority. It takes those who are disadvantaged (generally minorities) and makes it harder to get public resources for children who should always be treated equally. Then the children of the poor have less education, fewer connections, and are easily identified as being poor. Further isolating them. This keeps races apart easily, while technically not drawing a hard line by race.
Everything that I'm talking about is like this. Using sweeping population generalities and being willing to sacrifice a few outliers in order to keep the majority of each group where they want them. Rich in one case, poor in the other.
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@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
I have no idea the areas you are referring to. You'd have to look them up to see how much each school district collects from property/home taxes. Then see how much of that the schools in that district each get accordingly.
Why would that matter? You explained why it is detestable and racist. We all know it exists. Where it happens specifically isn't important. It's a known mechanism. And it's not unique to the US. Panama does it too, for example.
Texas is really bad with this and has layers and layers of these mechanisms to continuously maintain racial divides, while allowing special cases through in either direction (a rare white family becomes poor that wasn't before, a rare minority family runs a super successful business). Special cases don't generally bother racists, not much anyway. It's keeping populations apart and with one having an advantage over another.
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@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
However, if you are telling me that race can never include "American" then you are getting into a quagmire.
Personally, I think American is a dumb term the way it's used. This whole side of the world is "American". North, central, and south.
To me, American is in no way a race.
I understand "American" to mean a nationality, not a race.
@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:
I identify as Swiss/Dutch/Scottish and always have.
That refers to your ancestry or ethnicity, which is more about cultural and geographical origins than race.
