@coliver said in Not much luck with Linux Distro's:

@JaredBusch https://nobaraproject.org/. It's from the main developer behind Proton. I've been running it since it came out.

You mean... Steam?

Something that I just had to say to someone in Montana dealing with this problem...

They assumed no one was reporting the issue, since the state hadn't fixed it. But in reality, normal reports of the site being down wouldn't inform them of much. ANd when the hosting people check and the site is up, likely they'd ignore the reports.

The problem with things like geo-IT blocking is that anyone that would use that as a tool thinking it had some value, would naturally have little chance of being able to understand when or why it wouldn't work. If they had the ability to troubleshoot it, they've have the knowledge that would have told them it was never okay to use in the first place.

Awesome example happening right now.

https://montanastatefund.com/

For no good reason, this is geo-blocked. And in the worst way, without stating the issue but presenting the site as being offline. Works from some places in Montana. Works from some places in California. Blocked in Nicaragua or Bolivia where we casually tested.

Now before someone makes an insane excuse that there is no reason for those places to use that site, keep in mind that the Montana companies IT team members are in those locations being asked to deal with an issue that involves that site not working. And keep in mind that people from Montana are, presumably, allowed to travel. So any suggestion that there is never a need to see a state government site outside of that state, or the US, is ridiculous and hopefully no one would ever suggest such a thing. Obviously government resources are some of the most important things to be available to US citizens and US businesses when using IPs that aren't listed as being in the US.

So what is the actual problem? In blocking "other countries", that state accidentally blocked some ISPs in Montana, too. We know this because we have sites in Montana with dual ISPs. And on one ISP it just works, on another, it is blocked. Both are Montana IPs. But people on the one ISP don't get told that the resources is blocked, they don't get told what to do, they are simply shown that the resources is offline. That's a huge problem as normal people wouldn't even know to work around a broken geo IP block. Especially when they are in the same state.

The risks to geo IP blocking are big. The benefits.. are simply lies. There are none.

This is a great example where the technical reasons often listed for why you might want to geo-IP block can easily be shown to actually be reasons why you can't.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

@scottalanmiller said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

There's never a technical reason. We've been discussing this for years. It's common IT knowledge that there is no technical reason to geo-IP block as it doesn't do what the name implies.

It is almost always a technical reason, if ever a racially motivated one. Technical as in one or more of the reasons (not an exclusive list either) I listed in my first post.

That's obviously false as there IS no technical reason to do so. Never once have I ever heard any plausible technical reason ever suggested. But tons of "just bad business" and sometimes illegal issues with blocking. Your list of potential reasons contained zero actual viable options. None of those were true or would meet the requirements. Saying "it's almost always technical" when no known technical reason even exists, is quite the stretch. Especially when, when confronted, zero examples of "it's technical" and always "we don't want to do business with 'those people'" have been given in real life.

What is your basis for this statement? How could it possible be plausible? Your first post IS the perfect example. You couldn't come up with a single real world possible reason. We pointed out that none of those apply to any actual scenario that anyone could think of.

Man, I wish I was there

@Mario-Jakovina said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

I do not think we are "entitled" to access all sites by default - if someone do not want it's site to be accessible from Europe, I'm find with it.

In the same vein, I don't think any human should be "entitled" to use someones race or proxy for race, like nationality, as a determining factor for anything. The idea that people who live in, or are willing to travel to, certain regions should be excluded goes down the path of... you can do anything you want. Where does that stop? Why is it okay to discriminate against someone for being "from" or "in" a place, but not being "of" a place? WHat's the difference? Hard lines is all.

This is the very argument used by extreme racists to justify racists actions. It's a standard pattern. I know why it feels okay. But I think when you really look and say "oh wait, there is no honest, ethical reason to ever do this" it starts to make sense. In the INternet, where your IP is means nothing. Imagine if this was an in person shop and that you have a European passport means you are turned away and not allowed to shop. Or more specifically a Croatian one. Oh, you are a Croat? You can't shop here. You say "But I'm not a Croat, I just moved there and live there". Oh, well, too bad, we don't serve people who associate with Croats either.

Does that not feel racist? Is it legal? Yes, in the US. Is it okay? Never. Why do we excuse it on the Internet when it would disgust us in person?

@Mario-Jakovina said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

I think people are free to geoblock their sites if they think it is usefull for them and if they do not break any law etc.

Yes, in SOME cases, people are free to discriminate, that's correct (in the US where racism is heavily supported by the government.) It's not ethical, but it's legal IF you aren't a publicly traded company or in any way a function of the government and need to be available to the public. Which isn't much in a country where nearly every industry is eventually backed by the government (the US is heavily leaning towards government ownership and planned economy compared to more capitalistic countries.)

But that's not in question. Are people LEGALLY allowed to be racist? Yes. That's not the question.

@Mario-Jakovina said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

On the other hand, I do not find it "discriminatory" either.

It's literally a mechanism to discriminate by the perceived ownership of an IP address by a group of people. It's as discriminatory as it gets.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

That'd make WAY more sense, and something I could even get on board with, providing there aren't any technical reasons that make much more sense such as those I listed initially.

There's never a technical reason. We've been discussing this for years. It's common IT knowledge that there is no technical reason to geo-IP block as it doesn't do what the name implies.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

Or,

"This website is blocking every country in the world except the U.S., and their phone support also said it's due to the owners of the service having a huge prejudice against all non-U.S. countries."

So you are okay with saying it is racism, as long as we couch the verbage so to make it feel more palatable to sensitive people who are racist, and we say that they are racist, but we avoid the word to not hurt their feelings?

When do we care about hurting the feelings of people being racist? That seems crazy.

@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

@Mario-Jakovina said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

@CCWTech said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

https://gephardtdaily.com/

There is one example.

It is geo blocked in my country.
But I do not find it racist

Should we call it unnecessarily discriminatory (Instead of racist?)

No, I don't think so. Because fundamentally it is about race or the perception of race without any real alternative. When you see Americans as a race, as many Americans do, limiting anyone "except Americans" cannot be anything but racism. And no amount of "I don't see it that way" personally, changes the reality that that's how many Americans see being American (and mirrors how other countries are.) I don't think we should ever bow to the millenial "don't make people upset" mentality. Yes, I know it feels bad to admit that we are often surrounded by bad people, but we can't worry about acts of evil being ignored just because some scared American racist will be butt hurt over being called out. There's way too much "we can't make them feel bad" about this stuff in America. Man up America, put your big girl panties on and accept when you do bad things. Call it out. make it stop.

@CCWTech 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.:

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

You are mistaking ancestry, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, and linguistic group with race.

Which of those you use to identify with is your choice. But are all different things.

So what race is someone who is mixed?

They get to choose... How does that even work?

Example?

Someone who is white and black. They almost always choose black. Why? How do they even have a choice?

They don't, when you "choose" you are choosing your ethnicity.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

You are mistaking ancestry, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, and linguistic group with race.

Which of those you use to identify with is your choice. But are all different things.

Yes, but I'm only using DNA.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

Jews could be anti-Arab

That would be language / cultural discrimination or prejudice.

You are mistaking ancestry, ethnicity, culture, religion, nationality, and linguistic group with race.

Race is a categorization based on shared physical traits. (black, white, asian, indigenous)

Exactly. Jew and Arab differ only on DNA, not on anything else. I think you are thinking of Judaism and Islam. Those are not traits of the DNA.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

That would be religious / cultural (ethno-religious?) discrimination or prejudice.

It's also a race. MANY Jews are not culturally or religiously homogenous.

A great example of intra-racial racism is in common slurs. For example...

In Quebec, to be someone stupid is to be a newfie. Newfie is a racial slur against the slightly different racial group from Newfoundland. But it's been a slur so long, many people don't realize that that is what they are saying.

Or you might use the term vandal or vandalize. A racial slur against some Germans. But it is mostly used by other Germans. It's used by northern Germans as a slur against ones from the south. But as racial groups, they are separated by many thousands of years.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

You may identify by your ethnicity (Scottish for example), but your race may be White.

Most people identify by their race, not their ethnicity. Or some combination. For example by race my wife is Italian and Irish. But by ethnicity she is just Italian.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

I think that it's important to clarify that what you identify as and race are not the same things.

I can identify by nationality, ethnicity, or race. They are not same things.

You may identify by your ethnicity (Scottish for example), but your race may be White. (as an example, I don't know you)

Nationality is wholly different.

My nationality is American. That's clear cut. Your passport tells you this. It says nothing about you as a person. It's a legal thing.

Race is based on your DNA. It's who you are that no one can control. My race is predominantly, by no small margin, Swiss German. You can identify that by DNA. The chart you showed from 23 & Me or Ancenstry or whatever, is your racial information and nothing but racial. It can't determine anything else.

Ethnicity is your upbringing and culture. So for example, I was raised in a heavily Dutch influences, Swiss household. So my ethnicity is more heavily skewed towards Dutch than my DNA would suggest. But my ethnicity is also Swiss and Dutch.

Your race can never be changed. Your ethnicity is influenced by your life. So if I had been adopted by a family in Bogota and I was raised there as a local. My ethnicity would be Colombian. but my race would always be Swiss.

My kids are Swiss Italian by race. But heavily hispanic by ethnicity. Not fully, but partially whereas I am not.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

But I consider my race to be White -- not German, English, or Scottish.

I assume it's because I've grown up in the U.S. and have learned to base my race off of that.

Right. You grew up in a German dominated country and are mostly German (Scottish is celtic, all the rest are Germans) that reclassified German as white about 80 years ago and has tried to make a point of making their white population unified (mostly, we suspect, as a means of banding together to retain a majority of more closely associated races as other races are more racial "distant.") That's a standard cultural trend over time.

If you lived in those individual countries, you'd see things probably a bit differently. But I also grew up in America and my background is shockingly close. however, I grew up one generation outside of a Swiss enclave and my family definitely didn't see ourselves as any closer to British as to Hispanic. Both were "other races". Not in a negative way, just "not Swiss". I grew up as Swiss German (not Swiss French as many are) with some Dutch and Scottish as "seasoning."

Both approaches exist commonly in the US. You get loads of people who see themselves as "American." But my wife's family is Italian and they'd never say American, they are absolutely Italian in every sense. Even though some of her family has been here since the Mayflower.

@Obsolesce said in Is it racist? I think it is.:

I don't know you personally, but I'd assume that I would say you are one of the 7-ish major races. None of which are Swiss, Dutch, or Scottish.

I agree that most people see a few racial top level categories. I don't agree that racism doens't exist between those categories. If you try to do that you dismiss the idea, for example, that Arabs could be anti-Jewish or that Jews could be anti-Arab at a racial level since they are the same "race" both top level and sub level group. Yet clearly, the world sees them as racially different.

The world has always seen Europe alone as having about seven major races... Celtic, German, Slavic, Hellenic, Latin, Iberian, and Magyar plus the tiny race that is in Finland, Estonia and the Basque country.

When we were kids the world was like "four major races". But who is in which one keeps changing and everyone has different opinions. But essentially everyone considered like Irish and Polish to be two different races (and they are in every meaningful way) and groups that have recently all been labeled as white have had millennia of racism between them.

You can't just wash away the responsibility that companies or people have for being racist by attempting to wipe away the human concepts of racism. You and I can have nice, logical discussions as to whether races are real, imaginary, useful, etc. BUt what matters for racism to exist is for people to perceive and detect a race to which they belong and races of other people. Race is a perception. So for most people, "other people" are another race even if they are genetically the same. Meaning, the average American knows no more about the average Canadian or the average Afghani or the average Somali and may easily equally see all as "not American" because they have racism from afar.