Delete FROM users WHERE location = 'Iran';

Sanctions: goals, effectiveness, and collateral damage

• One camp argues sanctions are a lesser evil than war: they limit adversaries’ economic and military capacity, slow long‑term growth, and can sometimes force policy change or be part of broader pressure (e.g., nuclear deals, apartheid, Libya).
• Others say decades of sanctions (Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Venezuela, Russia) show they rarely achieve stated goals, often entrench regimes, and mainly punish ordinary people who already suffer under authoritarian rule.
• There’s debate whether the real purpose is regime change via popular revolt, degrading war capacity, signaling resolve to allies, or simply “making an example” to deter others.
• Several comments note empirical claims that sanctions “work about a third of the time,” but others question the methodology and selection bias of such studies.

Collective responsibility and democracy

• A major fault line: are citizens morally responsible for their governments’ actions?
• Some argue “the people are the country”: if you hold a passport and benefit from a state, you share responsibility, especially in democracies.
• Others counter that even in democracies voters have limited real influence, and in autocracies or theocracies citizens have almost none; blaming Iranians, Russians, etc. for state policy is seen as unjust and often a form of dehumanization.
• Parallel criticism: Westerners excuse themselves (“our government,” “this administration”) while saying “you Iranians/Russians chose this,” despite coups, structural constraints, and repression.

Company obligations, risk, and behavior

• US and some EU companies face severe legal penalties (multi‑million‑dollar fines and potential prison) for dealing with sanctioned entities; lawyers therefore push for maximal blocking and “ghosting” once risk is detected.
• Others note OFAC general licenses and exemptions exist; big platforms sometimes could seek licenses but often don’t because the business upside is small and legal departments are conservative.
• Some see corporate activism (e.g., blocking Iranian/Russian IPs with moralizing messages) as empty signaling or xenophobic; others defend it as a legitimate boycott or compliance overreach.

Technical and practical impacts on users in sanctioned states

• Iranians describe being blocked twice: domestically by state firewalls and externally by sanctions, forcing ubiquitous VPN use and brittle workarounds.
• Losing access to SaaS tools and cloud platforms, sometimes with data wiped and no export path, is a recurring pain point; commenters argue this shows the risk of SaaS lock‑in for everyone.
• Some site operators block entire countries mainly due to abuse/DoS traffic, not politics, but acknowledge collateral damage and that determined attackers can route around blocks.

Geopolitical double standards and racism accusations

• Multiple commenters highlight asymmetry: Iran/Russia/Cuba are heavily sanctioned and their citizens blamed, while US and close allies engaging in wars or alleged war crimes rarely face analogous tech‑sector sanctions.
• The specific “your decision to arm Russia” error page is widely criticized as imputing state action to an individual user and mirroring a broader Western habit of essentializing “Iranians,” “Russians,” “Chinese,” etc.
• Some frame this as covert racism or civilizational bias: non‑Western populations are treated as a monolith, Western ones get individualized treatment.

Decentralization, data ownership, and platform power

• The thread repeatedly points to US‑centric infrastructure (GitHub, app stores, cloud, payment rails) as a geopolitical lever: when Washington sanctions, global users can lose access overnight.
• This fuels arguments for:
  • Self‑hosting and owning one’s data.
  • Avoiding single‑vendor app stores and proprietary SaaS for critical work.
  • Building local alternatives in sanctioned countries (seen as both a survival strategy and an unintended consequence of sanctions).

Meta: language, prisons, and civility

• A long sub‑thread criticizes casual references to “pounding‑in‑the‑ass prison” as trivializing sexual violence and reflecting US cultural attitudes toward punishment.
• Broader concern: how easily discussions slip into dehumanizing language—whether about prisoners, sanctioned populations, or “enemy” nations—while ostensibly arguing about human rights.