Cut Russia from GitHub due to invasion of Ukraine | Hacker News Reader

Cut Russia from GitHub due to invasion of Ukraine

github.com

55 pointsjawk87 comments

Too many people are missing the point of actions like this. You want to make lives of everyone in Russia more unpleasant to send the signal that a war can’t be an easy PR win. If you start a war, it should suck for your citizens, even if they are watching the news from a safe distance. If your leader starts a war, your life will become worse and you will be poorer personally. Sure, this is less effective for authoritarian countries, but is still useful.

Of course most Github users from Russia aren’t guilty, and many of them are already against the war. Good for them! But that’s not the point.

What is the point then?

White collar workers just flee the country: See Venezuela, Iran, etc. Even Russian Revolution itself is an example of this trend.

When white collar workers become "inconvenient" they get purged as enemies of the people. See Pol Pot's reign of terror in Cambodia. He had brutally purged roughly 25% of his own population, far more in relative numbers than Stalin, Hitler or Mao did, yet he still had been in power for decades, even after Vietnam invaded after massive refugee crisis.

Iran had violent protests in the past few years, but the protesters just got killed and that was it.

Interesting how fast people lose all compassion and sympathy, and really humanity, towards a whole population which itself might be against what it's leaders are doing ...

Also: I have yet to see such suggestions directed at the US or Israeli population for the many, well-known war crimes their leaders have committed and still are.

No one wants any harm to the Russian people, but they too must do something to stop their madman. I know it is much more dangerous for them than for us keyboard pundits, but it is their responsibility. Think how much more dangerous it is for Ukrainians.

Russia is a huge totalitarian prison and nobody can do much without being arrested or murdered.

Just like Ukranians are being murdered.

For their opinion?

For even less, for just being Ukranian.

Any proofs? Please send me a link to an article where some Ukrainians were killed by their own government forces (that’s an important point) for being Ukrainian. Or for some protest actions.

From my side, I can easily send you hundreds of links to prove that you can be jailed just for clicking the “like” button in Russia.

That's not what I mean.

I mean Russians are murdering Ukranians right now.

So the least Russians opposed to it could do is protest even under threat of arrest. Protests already are happening in Russian cities so it is possible.

You are not following Belarus or Russia close enough to know that protests are going on non stop for pretty much a decade for little to no avail. Your view is understandable (I used to be likewise naive), but it does not have much connection to reality.

While enacting a substantial change does not appear possible you can protest and people do, at least in larger cities streets become full with people holding banners. (Photo galleries were posted on HN and FWIW I have supporting information from someone who is directly there.) Protesters are selectively detained, but there is no mass murder or vanishing of people unlike what I imagine would happen in China (or Hong Kong now) so not sure if 'totalitarian prison' is entirely descriptive.

Blocking is a trade-off. Take Google access as another instance. On one hand, it lets sane people not be limited to just state propaganda by watching live the destruction their government is enacting, as well as communicate to the outside world that they do not support it by protesting and sharing photos of protests. OTOH, it lets bots mass-report YT livestream watchers, causing automated ban waves. If we block access, we address the latter, but also eliminate the former.

There are ways to protest without risking arrest: walkouts and silent vigils. Nobody will arrest people simply walking on the streets in silence.

Imagine the power of rivers of people covering the Russian city streets at the same time, simply walking in silence. No signs, no screaming, no pushing against police - just walking. It would send a strong signal to the leadership with minimal danger to the protesters.

You kidding? That's exactly what have been happening in Russia, or Belarus. When there is a larger crowd on the street that it supposed to be and it shows some signs that it's politically motivated, the police starts to catch people, like any random person. Because it doesn't matter who you put to jail. It made like that to send a signal so everyone sees that them could be next simply by going outside.

Sorry, I didn't know. That's horrifying.

I guess you have to see how it work there:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfKdiI_usQs - https://www.youtube.com/shorts/usqhDfBPsMc - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0q40OsZjoV8 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3acUPxtV-w

Or just search something like "russia protests police" on YouTube

How about China?

“Whataboutism” is not helpful. Focus on the problem at hand.

The presented "solution" isn't one at all, see Iran.

China is the problem at hand, among many.

Examining arguments for logical consistency and reasoning is very helpful to find flaws in them.

Yeah, and see how you want to help them to fight against Putin - you block their access to GitHub to make them lose their jobs. Without the money - do you think they will go fight on the streets? No, they will look for other ways to feed their families. If they are isolated, they will have no other choice than start working on government.

By action like this, you are just turning into enemies those who want to be on your side.

I totally sympathize and agree it doesn't sound fair but you will see more and more embargos and boycotts directed at Russia and Russians the more this Ukrainian murderous invasion continues...

I do not think you “sympathize”, I’m reading through your lines that you are quite enjoying it. I’m not in Russia, it will not affect me, so don't be so excited. But such hostile nationalistic behavior will be remembered, and not only by me.

You have all the reasons to hate Putin - I hate him too. But if you are saying (literally or not) that you just hate Russians - feelings will quickly become mutual.

You are reading wrong: I am in Eastern Europe and I have Russians ancestry so hating Russians would mean hating myself.

I can't do much really and I am just wondering here how we can solve this mess...

So when are economic sanctions appropriate? Never? Because economic sanctions are meant to hurt people so much that regime instability becomes a story.

In the scale of damage, this is harming random Russians less then economic response or military response. This is same level of boycott as soccer, skiing or eurovision boycotts of Russia.

Unfortunately, there is no way how to harm Putin and his friends only. Wars are like that.

I imagine if the whole world was using a Russian VCS site, and silicon valley was a region of moscow these same discussions would take place in reverse.

Cutting off the US for their invasion of Iraq would have seemed pretty reasonable.

But maybe not so much, since that country was provably ruled by a dictator, so people wouldn’t feel the same about the attack as about one made on a liberal democracy.

"Imagine if the good guys were bad and the bad guys good."

But they aren't. And you know why? Because you can't have creativity and innovations without freedom. You can't have money and success without a population where the best and most successful are allowed to create and keep a large part of the value they build.

This is why dictatorships never build Silicon Valleys while their best and brightest quietly emigrate to work and create in freedom.

To some extend this is true, but I think China tells is that there is a balance somewhere, even if we haven’t quite found it yet.

>Also: I have yet to see such suggestions directed at the US or Israeli population

Then you can't have looked very hard because there's a plethora of boycott movements against Israel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boycott,_Divestment_and_Sancti...

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

There's even a Github example:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200923222519/https://github.co...

On the other hand: "Twenty-six states have adopted laws that punish companies that choose to boycott Israel."

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/1/9/18172826/bd...

BDS is literally a movement by Palestinians directed at their war-enemy next door. That would be like Ukrainians boycotting Russians now. You get the point ...

I don't get your point, actually. Of course the US or Israel won't boycott themselves.

Sure, but let me give you an example of what I mean: "The consensus view of the international community is that Israeli settlements are illegal and constitute a violation of international law." [0]

Yet, have you seen any western govt demand sanctions on the Israeli population for that? Have you seen this guy here demand github be banned for all Israelis? Of course not - and that's just the moral double standards I'm calling out.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_law_and_Israel...

There's been plenty of calls within the EU to ban trade of goods made in Israeli settlements. AFAIK the latest news it that the EU courts ruled in favor of a ban.

Afaik, those calls happened multinationally multiple times, being blocked by USA every single time.

Interesting how fast you lost all compassion and sympathy for the innocent civilians getting killed by Russia in the Ukraine ... assuming you ever had any.

I haven’t lost any sympathy for the Russian population, especially not the part that doesn’t support Putin.

But sanctions cannot and will not only affect the Russian leadership or war machine. It must affect society as a whole. So long as Russians are still more afraid of Putin than of a decade of recession, the sanctions are not harsh enough. Putin doesn’t care about sanctions. He worries about being lynched.

Also: take the whataboutism elsewhere. It’s not an argument to say “but what about X? Why didn’t the same happen when X did something wrong?”.

This would be very similar to limiting email to and from Russia. A bad idea. Put a permanent Ukrainian colour theme on GitHub and a page explaining that GitHub condemns the act instead.

They might block it anyways because it can be used to share information, so that is not a concern.

Also on every git push, display a message in the users console that condemns Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine.

That would have Canonical CLI ads vibes...

Apple/Google could easily add a persistent notification to devices in Russia saying something along the lines of "The world condemns the invasion of Ukraine".

"Russian government has been building internet wall for a while now, let's help them and cut them out immediately and for free, that will show them!" - Somebody smart /s

Yeah: don't hold your breath on that.

This is why self-hosting is the ultimate best solution and is a big criterion when i choose software.If you have moral/ethical problems towards an entity: you can solve them, because you're in control, not some "magical cloud fairy" you have to beg to stop providing useful resources to a regime(yes, ultimately even normal well-intended citizens become part of the regime, like it or not) that kills your family or close ones.

As stated previously in my comments, the corporate western world is either personally fetishizing russian or totalitarian regimes (there >are< other examples besides russia/china from the past 10-15 years), or they/their higher-ups are too invested into those countries to be able to do something meaningful without hurting themselves and their own financial well-being.

But does this not impact ALL russians including those protesting against putin? Also, does this not go against the entire FOSS philosophy- free as in libre and free as in gratis?

Worse than that, it would target mostly the people that are already against him, possibly forcing a lot of them to immigrate and leaving even fewer active opposition inside the country.

It is worth noting that GitHub is not, and has never been, free software.

It is likely an error to assume that GitHub's operators have "foss philosophy", especially given that GitHub is owned by the people who sell Windows and Office and Xbox.

I am aware github itself is not foss. But the vast majority of FOSS projects hosted on github make github a big FOSS place, and by blocking their access (and asking for them to be blocked) is denying access to a lot of FOSS

Github is fully available in Iran after securing a license to operate there from the US government. GitHub is about developer freedom. [0]

Why would they be against developer freedom in Russia?

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648585

As it has already been noted in the issue’s comments - this move won’t affect Putin’s supporters (yes, they exist in Russia and they aren’t just a few freaks), it won’t even affect the majority of those living in Russia. The most affected group will be young-middle aged educated people who are interacting with the rest of the world (ad opposed to the rest who can be fed any BS by state TV) and who are mostly in opposition to Putin’s actions. So it does more harm than good. Roskomnadzor has started ”restricting”/throttling traffic to FB and probably other big international websites/social networks, so the options to get more independent info about the reality are getting scarce in Russia.

We all share responsibility for the actions of our governments.

When a state behaves inappropriately, it is the responsibility of it's citizens to correct it and prevent it from happening again.

This applies equally to the transgressions of the United States as it does to Russia.

Why not cut off Russia from the internet and any form of tech really? That would send them into a free fall, wouldn't it? Some people immediately bring up China, but those who know history, know very well that China is Russia's frenemy at best.

I'm just speculating here, but what if say Microsoft sent a Russia-wide update that wipes all data and kills Windows?

Because countries living in an isolated internet has worked out so well historical. Look at North Korea. It's a utopia. The population oh so loves living there. They definitely do not want to leave.

If it's unclear, that's a ball of sarcasm.

> I'm just speculating here, but what if say Microsoft sent a Russia-wide update that wipes all data and kills Windows?

Besides this being quite unethical because that, again, would affect the common folk, many of whom are against this war, it's a temporary measure. That is, assuming their systems aren't mostly Linux/BSD based.

How would Microsoft restrict it to Russia?

Assuming it’s possible, why would any country trust Microsoft afterwards?

Why trust them right now?

Further isolation, physical or technological is not the way forward. If the west wants to lead we have to bring countries like Russian and China with us and show their people there is a better way(If indeed it is better).

Well history has not been able to show that your strategy works either - or simply said: We have a very grave situation in Europe _right now_ so we need immediate action _right now_ as well.

Because feeding China money and tech turned out so well, huh?

Other countries would immediately start adopting Linux if MS decides to wipe data because they don't like that govt.

I don't see it happening. If someone cuts internet it will be Russia.

Cut everything. This is probably among the less effective sanctions as its probably not affecting Putin supporters or anyone in power but more osint volunteers and similar.

But do cut off civilian exports to Russia such as airplane parts. Ten time zones is a big place once the Boeings and Airbuses (90%+ of fleets?) are grounded for maintenance.

Instead of blocking, I recommend using the opportunity and attention to provide visitors from Russia with objective information about about the war to counter lies from the Russian government. Russia is engaged in a shameful war and they are hiding its true extent from their population.

Stupid idea. Move on.

My 2 cents, if somehow github can, throttling the Russian ip may be good.

1. It still provide access to citizens

2. Those with vpn can still access it unthrottled

3. It makes the news and set precedent

4. Nobody should underestimate how angry a programmer with a slow connection will be

EDIT: with recent censorship from Russia, it's a tricky situation if github show some "invasion" notice there. Either Russia block github themselves or they irritated because they can't do anything.

Ha, this is true, a slow connection is more of a hassle than no connection.

Most young educated russians (the ones that use github) are against this war already, the problem is that no one can really do anything as literally holding a blank piece of paper in front of any government building will get you arrested.

Those are not the people you want to target, target the elites close to Putin, those are the ones that could probably force some change.

Today people who need Github and Stackoverflow for their work are not without influence, so this heuristic is not without merit.

If we are discussing getting a city's PLCs to stop pumping sewage in reverse after a cyber attack then access should be open. If it's about Yandex server farms then it's different.

Stop this stupid separatism. If you’re an engineer, rather ask for the root causes hidden behind the scenes. Bonus hint: main stream media with their war propaganda won’t tell you the root causes. They infect you with further separatism ideas.

Sounds good. While they're at it, also:

- cut off Israel from GitHub for the occupation of Palestine

- cut off Saudi Arabia from GitHub for the invasion of Yemen

- cut off the US from GitHub for the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq

- etc.

No double standards for the same imperialisms, please.

Not the same imperialism. The US was clearly never planning to stay in Iraq and Afghanistan. They grossly miscalculated.

For Russia this is a war of expansion.

I think under those conditions Israel could be cut off though.

Interesting how that additional criteria conveniently excludes the US.

Don’t think that’s particularly convenient, there’s plenty of other reasons to cut the US off. Just not very realistic.

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