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Howto: Block Amazon and any site using Amazon Web Services
- maxwellito 7y agoI find the initiative interesting, at least to realise how much of our daily browsing is hosted on AWS. I will give a go for sure!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- supergauntlet 7y agoI mean I get the idea and all, but considering half the internet runs on AWS is this even feasible? Your day-to-day internet use would be crippled. Wouldn't it be better to spend the effort on writing letters to politicians or better yet campaigning yourself? (I'm assuming this is being posted because of the prime day walkouts today)
- ryanisnan 7y agoThis is clearly meant to be more of a statement than a practical means. And yes, to effect change, advocacy surely must be much more effective.
- glitchc 7y agoIndeed, there is nothing inherently wrong with AWS. On the broader topic, what's wrong with people spending money on things they want? We live in a free country. If you have money, and want to buy junk with it, more power to you. It's your money. Do whatever you want with it. As far as vices are concerned, I would rather someone derived satisfaction from binge shopping than the alternatives (gambling, alcoholism, drugs, etc. etc.), since those have far more deleterious effects on society.
- floatboth 7y agoNo one's protesting binge shopping, it's all about how Amazon treats its warehouse workers (spoiler: horribly). The first link of the article says > in solidarity with striking workers in several fulfillment centers in Spain
- pmoriarty 7y ago"what's wrong with people spending money on things they want?" It depends on what they're buying. Many people would consider unethical the buying of children or child pornography, for instance. Bans on ivory, whaling, and trading in endangered species have gained ground in recent years. Some arguments for what's wrong with those are that the former exploit people who are unable to defend themselves or even realize they're being exploited, while the latter cost the lives of sentient creatures and reduce biodiversity by causing extinctions. Now, whether you find any of those arguments persuasive depends on your own values. Some people see nothing wrong with exploitation or species extinction. It's really difficult to argue against them. Either you share certain fundamental values with the rest of us or you don't. Philosophers study such ethical issues in nauseating detail, but I've yet to see how any of their arguments would be persuasive to someone who doesn't already share their core values.
- whinehands 7y agoThis doesn't block any site using AWS, only sites which are fronted by a server hosted within AWS.
- elevation 7y agoI've toyed with the idea of setting up a no-FAANG VPN that implements these restrictions based on the ip networks advertised by the relevant ASNs. This would provide more complete coverage, and be useful as a testing tool, allowing you to verify that your own web properties still function without assets being loaded from a global active adversary.
- rootsudo 7y agoThat actually is a great idea.
- morpheuskafka 7y agoIt still doesn't actually block everything on those clouds. I can go get my own ASN, run my own edge server (or use a small CDN company not on your list) and use whatever I want on the back end for database, queue, backup, storage, compute, etc. All you'll know my IP is where the edge node is.
- elevation 7y agoA VPN would still be effective at suppressing the tracking effects of all the "like buttons" while also revealing issues such as jquery being loaded off a CDN that also directly hosts content for 40% of the web. For users wanting to thwart pervasive CDNs from receiving packets every time they visit almost any site on the web, it's matters less if a service they visit is using an amazon resource on the back end; as long as all services aren't using the same database backend, this puts e.g. AWS back in the position of only having a little of your consumer/browsing information instead of nearly all of it.
- maximente 7y agoi would be willing to throw up to $50 for this
- yfiapo 7y agoMmmkay. Have fun with that. The attempt is also incomplete. I suspect this would miss ranges advertised through AWS's BYOIP (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-byoip.html https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-byoi...) option. It would definitely miss ranges advertised through companies' own datacenters and serviced in the backend by AWS.
- jrowley 7y ago33.5 million IP addresses is no small drop in the bucket though!
- benologist 7y agoWe could start by shunning AWS content when their $200k+ salaried employees are posting their latest announcements on HN while their unsalaried, not-employed coworkers in the warehouses are sprinting to and from a piss break trying not to be fired.
- tempsolution 7y agoAny of the warehouse workers has or had the chance to obtain the skills of an AWS employee... Or are you advocating communism?
- mikeash 7y agoBecause the only two possibilities are worker abuse or communism?
- SamBam 7y agoI'm not entirely sure what you're arguing. Are you saying it's ok to treat nonskilled workers badly because they have the opportunity to gain skills?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dec0dedab0de 7y agoI think boycotting is pretty much the opposite of communism. Also, Just because someone does not have in demand skills does not mean that they should be subjected to poor treatment.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- steffandroid 7y agoCommunism would be pretty good, yes.
- tambre 7y agoThis tutorial's of limited use to 30% of users, who have IPv6.
- floatboth 7y ago> Counter-intuitively, AWS makes it very easy to do this! They publish and continuously update a list of IP ranges It's not like any legitimate company could keep their IP address ranges private (other than by using seemingly unrelated shell companies) :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- LinuxBender 7y agoI have found their list to be out-dated. I have to use bgp lookup sites to fill in the blanks. There are many ranges and small blocks they leave out that are not hosted in their datacenter directly.
- artursapek 7y agoI imagine the guys building AWS are treated pretty well, compared to their warehouse guys.
- ryanmercer 7y agoWouldn't blocking stuff using AWS block like, a significant chunk of the internet?
- Topgamer7 7y agoYes
- LinuxBender 7y agoAs an experiment, you could always put their ranges into your IDP / IDP / firewalls and just get summary data for how many packets / flows / bytes are transferred to/from AWS. (Rather than outright blocking)
- tanilama 7y agololl, good luck.
- tracer4201 7y agoOh boy, another one of the daily anti-FAANG posts. Amazon is evil and should be boycotted - usually coming from people who shop at WalMart and invest in companies like BP (i.e. my in-laws). Good luck blocking AWS - and whatever percentage of the internet running on it.
- DangBigot 7y agonote previous post from this user: > Disclaimer: I’m own about $500K in my portfolio in Amazon.
- tracer4201 7y agoYeah and I posted that openly. They’re actually the smallest of the FAANGs in my portfolio. I’m invested heavily in tech, banking, energy, and retail, including WalMart. It’s hilarious and sad that my post caused you enough grief to dig up content from my post history as if that makes any of my points less valid.
- JeremyBanks 7y agoYour point were so absurd that I (correctly) assumed that there was some bias driving it. :)
- joshypants 7y agoI would think efforts like this are less about completeness and more about creating a media event around the fact that ICE uses AWS to do harm to people.
- jamiequint 7y agoICE uses AWS to help take into custody people who have deportation orders. Can anyone explain why this is even remotely controversial? What is the alternative, open borders? no deportation ever?
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- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- InvaderFizz 7y agoReminds me of about three years ago, a buddy who does Cybersecurity for a very large military base was tasked with blocking AWS from their network due to porn. He found it quite humorous, warned them of the consequences, got everything in writing(including his warnings), and executed his orders. The base commander was not amused and the blocks were removed in about 12 hours. Unfortunately, the responsible party never suffered more than egg on their face for the stupidity. They tried to shift blame to my buddy, but he had dotted his i's and crossed his t's. He did get a nice one-on-one with the Base Commander, where he was able to lay everything out.
- lowlevel 7y agoWouldn't it be easier to just turn off wifi and unplug the ethernet cable?
- knowuh 7y agoding ding ding ⬆
- t0mbstone 7y agoAnd to get around this, simply route all your traffic through Cloudflare...
- nautilus12 7y agoHalf the internet would be unusable, lol.
- Lendal 7y agoThere is a large community of people here in the US who block every company that does bad things. Yes I'm talking about the Amish. But even in Amish society, there is politics and people who do Bad Things. Fortunately there are plenty of uninhabited mountaintops left that one can go and live on to maintain a clean conscience. But if we do that, then aren't we turning our backs on the world by not helping it? So now we'd need to come back to civilization and live amongst the unwashed masses once more. There's no way to live a perfectly good and blameless life.
- e-m-p 7y agoDo you realize how many companies run on AWS?
- RaptorJ 7y agoAnother of 2-3 stories about the Amazon strike deleted from the front page of Hacker news, it's hard to not be conspiratorial about this.
- parliament32 7y agoI'd rather do this with Cloudflare. Amazon may be naughty but CF is just evil: trying to normalize a MITM-as-a-service protection-racket as a business model is bad for everyone involved.