> 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.
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.
"Functional Programming in Scala" aka "Red Book of Scala" is a the one that IMO teaches to think the same way as SICP, while using a typed language. The books stand next to each other on my bookshelf, definitely worth reading.
Can confirm. Many paid VPNs are not reliable enough as Roskomnadzor is successfully targeting them. I though that by deploying Tailscale exit node on my own server I could overcome this. Alas, not anymore.
Among released 16 prisoners only 6 are Westerners, and even among those 2 or 3 have Russian citizenship as well. So Putin just swaps Russian citizens for other Russian citizens and that’s why it’s such a big deal - it’s the first time I can think of when West plays along with Russian democratic opposition so bold.
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.