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Tell HN: Mailchimp locked my account because I'm Russian

• AndrewKemendo 5y ago
  Mailchimp is a US company and thus bound to US law, which includes economic sanctions. This is likely Mailchimp complying with those sanctions.
  • f311a 5y ago
    There are no sanctions (yet) that target every citizen.
• bryan_w 5y ago
  And it's only going to get worse Unless you take to the streets. They can't arrest you all (or maybe they can, idk)
  • unmole 5y ago
    > Unless you take to the streets. I don't understand why keyboard warriors in liberal democracies seem to think that Putin is going to be toppled by street protests. As terrible as Putin is, he is objectively less terrible than Stalin. Yet, nobody was able to topple him.
    • sterlind 5y ago
      Arab Spring was street protests. results varied widely from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria, but in all cases protests led to massive change.
      • unmole 5y ago
        Last I checked Assad was still in power. This is despite significant foreign involvement. Is NATO going to start funding armed opposition in Russia?
        • 2rsf 5y ago
          (ex Israeli here) I actually don't think Syria is a good example for the Arab Spring,they were attacked by ISIS and Curds, Iran got involved on the way and then Russia, the US and Israel through some more fire into the mix. It was not an attempt to throw Aasad and start a democracy.
          • unmole 5y ago
            The street protests and the initial armed insurrection most definitely claimed they wanted to bring down Assad. How much of it was motivated by a a desire for democracy versus the resentment of the Sunni majority against perceived Alawite domination, I don't know.
      • csomar 5y ago
        > Arab Spring was street protests. results varied widely from Tunisia to Egypt to Syria, but in all cases protests led to massive change. With Tunisia going back to authoritarianism, Libya/Yemen at war, Egypt already back to military control and Syria holding the status quo.... I'm not sure what massive change you are talking about.
      • hnov 5y ago
        I would not want an Arab spring, give me a dictatorship over an endless low level conflict between warring factions any day.
      • wara23arish 5y ago
        Almost all of the arab spring countries except for Tunisia maybe are worse off, they are significantly worse off too. Literal slave market in Libya for example. People dont seem to understand that foreign interventions are complicated seem to almost always go wrong. Its not as simple as oh Saddam is a dictator, get rid of him, all done we good. What pisses me off the most is that these gov agents face no consequences for any failed interventions. They dont really care if people die as a result, cities are leveled refugees etc.. they’ll move on to get a promotion in the white house somewhere else and work on other stuff. I find it disgusting and dehumanizing. Apologies for the rant.
  • jim-jim-jim 5y ago
    > Unless you take to the streets. They can't arrest you all. This is really out of touch coming from childless Western men with email jobs. Revolutionary ideas guys.
    • TheAlchemist 5y ago
      As an Eastern European, I disagree. This guy is right. It has been done before (Solidarnosc) and it can be done again.
  • DoItToMe81 5y ago
    Russia is a dictatorship. The true constituents of Russia, the military, the oligarchs, all for now seem to unconditionally support Putin. Publicly demonstrating in a country known for violently ending public demonstrations is only going to get people needlessly killed. There are many other ways to dissent.
    • dragonwriter 5y ago
      > Publicly demonstrating in a country known for violently ending public demonstrations is only going to get people needlessly killed. Public activism (well targeted) is how you turn those things, particularly the military rank-and-file. I mean, it's not like the same thing wasn't true of the Tsarist regime when the various forces opposed to it started demonstrating.
  • Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
    The question is whether "you all" actually feel strongly about getting rid of Putin, or even having relations with the west. When Jacob Zuma was jailed, people went on pro-corruption riots. Pro-corruption, not anti-corruption. It's possible the same thing will happen in Russia if Putin is toppled too. Protesters may not only have to deal with the police, they might also have to deal with an angry pro-Putin lynch mob.
• smspillaz 5y ago
  > now we have even less freedom of speech inside the country. Did anybody read this part? I see a lot of comments along the lines of "well we're at war with you" or "you'll get your access back once Ukraine stops being bombed", with the justification that anyone living in Russia has the duty to "rise up" and stop the war locally. To be these responses seem thoroughly un-nuanced and flippant. Its absolutely true that to stop the war, you need to get rid of Putin, but its not clear that there's a connection between dropping clients and getting rid of Putin. In fact this is probably counterproductive and strengthen's Putin's grip on the population even further. The usual mechanism given is "if we annoy the people enough, they'll rise up on the streets and demand change". First, this assumes that if you annoy people, they'll transfer their anger to the regime. This is only true for a subgroup of affected people; the rest will just be angry at the sanctioning party and direct their anger through the regime into even stronger pro-war support. But for the people who might be motivated to protest, its not clear whether or not their actions will be effective. Because we're talking about a dictatorship, individual action carries both high personal risk and is unlikely to be very effective. There are exceptions to this rule, for example, Marina Ovsyannikova, but ordinary people going to the streets and holding up signs is only likely to end up with more people in jail (and potentially more people conscripted into the army). There is also the objection that mass-protest will make a difference, which, perhaps it will, but that requires co-ordination and a critical mass. The second thing to say here (relevant to what I quoted from OP) is that Mailchimp is infrastructure which is in use by the local resistance. By blanket cutting-off Russia, you're also hindering the local resistance as well. If one wants to take a principled stand, its probably fine to cut off regular businesses that have nothing to do with it (with the caveat that you might just make them angry at you), but throwing out the baby with the bathwater and cutting off the local resistance is just completely counterproductive. Due to the inability to make payments outside the country, their only options for replacement infrastructure are local, which are more likely to be under state influence and censorship. So now their only options are to shut down and stop organizing the resistance to the regime, or engage in self-censorship, which might as well just be shutting down.
• yokoprime 5y ago
  Your government did this to you, not mailchimp, not «the west». As long as Putin prioritizes invading sovereign countries for territorial gain, you just have to suck it up.
  • unmole 5y ago
    Putin had bombs planted in Russian cities, had his opponents jailed and assassinated and ordered the bombardment of Chechen, Syrian and Ukranian cities. But I'm pretty sure he didn't lock anyone out of their MailChimp account.
    • ZeroGravitas 5y ago
      Your list are all things that Putin ordered. Then the last thing is something that happened because of his orders. Did Putin personally send millions of refugees out of Ukraine? No, but he ordered the invasion and bombardment. And that's what lead to it happening. Did Putin personally supply Ukraine with German defensive weaponry? Ditto. Did Putin personally do whatever blowback occurs? Ditto.
      • unmole 5y ago
        > Then the last thing is something that happened because of his orders. Evacuating refugees and supplying weapons to Ukraine helps save civilian lives. What exactly does locking out OP from his mailing lists achieve? Far from being blowback, this is virtually zero cost, zero impact corporate virtue signalling.
        • axiosgunnar 5y ago
          > What exactly does locking out OP from his mailing lists achieve? Leave behind an economic scorched earth to hopefully deter future wannabe warmongerers from deciding to war monger. Sorry for OP but tbh, his pain is nothing compared to literally dying as many Ukrainians are right now.
          • 5y ago
• sheinsheish 5y ago
  Can’t you contact them and try to get a copy of your data ?
• sonicggg 5y ago
  I did not see any corporate announcement from Mailchimp regarding enforcement of sanctions. Ate you a Russian living in Russia?
  • f311a 5y ago
    Here the e-mail I got: Hello, As part of Intuit, Mailchimp is no longer supporting accounts based in Russia. This account is now suspended, and it will be necessary that you find a new vendor. If you believe that your account has been disabled in error, you may reply to this email. You will be asked to submit information demonstrating that your Mailchimp account complies with regulatory requirements and/or corporate policies. We join the millions around the world calling for a quick and peaceful resolution to the war. To find out more about Intuit’s position please click here. – Mailchimp I think all Russians got it, because there are a lot of complains.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• indemnity 5y ago
  Yes, well, Ukrainians are dying, when that stops maybe your inconveniences can too.
  • unmole 5y ago
    What you're saying is you'll be fine with getting cancelled because of whatever your government does?
    • axiosgunnar 5y ago
      This attempted generalization is a whataboutism. Very few governments initiate wars. It‘s only in this specific and utterly exceptional situation that yes, the citizen's should be cancelled because their government started a war and sanctioning them is our only less-than-WW3 option.
      • hnav 5y ago
        Interestingly, accusations of whataboutism are themselves kind of mindless. You do X, but so do you, whataboutism
      • unmole 5y ago
        > This attempted generalization is a whataboutism. No, if I asked why the Saudis aren't getting sanctioned despite causing the deaths of a hundred thousand Yemenis, that would be whataboutism.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
  Sorry for your loss, but you have to suck it up. This is hybrid warfare, and your country is at a kinda sorta war with the US. The 'good news' is your tech blog is going to be canceled anyway once the readers find out you're Russian. As a side note, it looks like Russian 'below-the-threshold' invasion of 2014 significantly altered American strategy and made it more versatile. We'll just have to wait and see if it changes the end game, though.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• pvaldes 5y ago
  The window opportunity of protesting in the streets has been closed. Who "wins" the war now will not change the fact that Ukraine will be rebuilt with your money. The bill is huge yet and keeps growing each day. Many young Russians are quitting the country. Probably the safest solution now that your president has going so mentally unstable as to equal a maternity full of women and newborn with a nazis den. Russia can just aim for a pyrrhic victory. Then will suffer a hard recession and faces a very bleak future. You have a bigger problem that Mailchimp access. If you can, quit the country.
  • Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
    Since we have an actual Russian in the thread, it would be interesting to have some light shed on this. One analysis I keep hearing is that economic collapse means that they will inevitably submit to western liberal democracy because living in a stone age economy with no proverbial coke or blue jeans is just too intolerable for people. The other analysis is that most Russians live quite independently of the economy, have never heard of any American chimpanzees delivering mail, have no interest in any western luxuries, and are happy as long as they can hear soothing messages from the state media about their greatness, and get drunk off the gourd on cheap vodka (which will practically be free if nobody buys Russian grain anymore). If the former is true, obviously pile on as many sanctions as possible. But if the latter is true, sanctions could make Russia less likely to change, not more. You'd want to get more people hooked on western goods, services and culture. I'm sure both groups of people exist concurrently, since Russia is anything but homogenous. But without actually living on the inside for a long time it's hard to tell which way the bias leans. And then there's the question of how strong the bias would need to be to justify one course of actions over the other.
    • pvaldes 5y ago
      > economic collapse means that they will inevitably submit to western liberal democracy Not, economic collapse means that Russia will became a serf from China. Coca cola, blue jeans and jewels are easily replaceable; Russia not having anymore Intel CPUs, or Taiwanese chips for fixing computers, or even neon gas required to make their own chips will not be so funny. And by Computers I mean all that is basically a computer now: cars, trains, machine, TV, phones, appliances... the "stone age" one is a good metaphor. Everything can be smuggled, is just more expensive, but "Smart" products can easily be redesigned to refuse to work inside Russian frontiers, for example. Of course Russia could buy (almost) everything from China instead, paying with raw materials or asking China to buy all things in their name (Many African countries are doing exactly that now), but then China will write the price. Russia will not have much leverage to negotiate in that position.
• aaron695 5y ago
• demetrius 5y ago
  Do you have an option of transferring the ownership to someone out of Russia? Maybe even find a co-author for the blog I don't know what's the Mailchimp policy on this, but that's a path I would try. Of course, that would require a lot of correspondence with the support and finding an actual person outside of Russia whom you trust.
• nagasadhu 5y ago
  Feel sorry for you mate. But citizens of the world have to put up with American hegemony and the hubris of having better military weapons and the petro dollar. You may not find much empathy by appealing to moral scruples on social media.
• nikolqy 5y ago
  Pretty nasty. Welcome to the big tech tyrants! Really, you’re paying too much for mail anyways. Oracle cloud email delivery is a mere $0.085/1,000 emails sent. For sure a much better deal than any other email delivery provider. Oh, you’ll also pay $0.0085/GB of data transferred. That’s $8.50 per 1 TB. Best deal in the world.