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Twitch blocks creating new accounts from Israeli IP's
- talldayo 2y agoAlso feasible that nationwide GPS spoofing in Israel makes it harder to automatically approve new account creations. If Israel is redirecting GPS systems to neighboring territories (eg. Syria or Iran) then it's pretty easy to see why those countries would be banned.
- aduffy 2y agoGeolocation does not use GPS, it uses IP addresses.
- pajeets 2y ago[flagged]
- dtquad 2y ago@dang the username "pajeets" is a racist term against people from India and nearby countries. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pajeet https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pajeet
- jeethate88 2y ago[flagged]
- lampeli 2y agomentions dont work you need to email him
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- blueflow 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- hobobaggins 2y agoWhy would they do this? It's a political statement from Amazon?
- tuyguntn 2y agomaybe excessive fake/bot account creations, which might be impacting quality of discussions
- dtquad 2y agoThe block was hardcoded into the source code on October 13, 2023. I think it would have been done by one of the ops teams if it was required by management. Probably just something done by a single dev.
- Seattle3503 2y agoIs there a source for this?
- fuzzbazz 2y agoWe'll know for sure the next time twitch's source code leaks
- n2d4 2y agoGoogling it returns this HN comment, so probably not. They are correct though when saying that the block has been in place for at least a few months now: https://x.com/Forceultraomega/status/1795189735297605635 https://x.com/Forceultraomega/status/1795189735297605635
- llimos 2y agoScreenshot of the source code: https://x.com/StopAntisemites/status/1848445010708205758 https://x.com/StopAntisemites/status/1848445010708205758 Hardcoded; only Palestine and Israel.
- bbor 2y agoLooks like they’ve been doing it since the start of the war, unless we have better source that it’s new than a tweet? I think it’s just coming up now because of twitch con related controversy. Either way it appears to be an attempt to keep themselves out of the spotlight, controversy wise. Definitely not a political statement, if for no other reason than they haven’t issued any statements. Also, the title is understandable given the relative internet access rates, but the slightly more accurate one would be “Twitch blocks creating new accounts from Israeli and Palestinian IPs”. Seems like a way, way worse way to avoid controversy than simply banning war streamers, but who am I to say. Also, the obvious hypocrisy of not banning accounts from Sudan, Ukraine, Russia, etc. doesn’t help their image. ETA: whatever the reason is, it appears to be policy, not technical: https://x.com/not_JayVee/status/1848031193469501473 https://x.com/not_JayVee/status/1848031193469501473
- pityJuke 2y agoTwitch recently unbanned two rather anti-semitic individuals in the form of “FreshAndFit” and “sneako”, which makes this decision all the more perplexing. Do they want to appear as if they are anti-semitic?
- dtquad 2y agoWorth pointing out that FnF and Sneako are actual far-right anti-semites and not just the generic left-wing pro-Palestine activists.
- pityJuke 2y agoIndeed. There’s a whole ‘nother controversy on the platform (which the tweet poster is a part of), but that’s far less clear cut than those two.
- ryandrake 2y agoI thought that "FreshAndFit" were more associated with The Manosphere and Andrew Tate-like topics[1] than they were with the far-right and Israel. I also recall reading somewhere that the name is an online redpill euphemism for underage girls, too, which if true, somehow manages to make it even more problematic than anti-semitism does. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_and_Fit_Podcast https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresh_and_Fit_Podcast
- rsynnott 2y ago> more associated with The Manosphere and Andrew Tate-like topics[1] than they were with the far-right [Insert "The Office" "They're the same picture" meme here.] Like, seriously, these are not meaningfully separate groups. One is a subset of the other.
- pityJuke 2y agoSee this article from Media Matters for America: https://www.mediamatters.org/rumble/right-wing-dating-podcast-fresh-fit-embraces-holocaust-denial https://www.mediamatters.org/rumble/right-wing-dating-podcas... To pick a recent tweet (warning about content as per usual): https://xcancel.com/MyronGainesX/status/1846656922143150534 https://xcancel.com/MyronGainesX/status/1846656922143150534 > Kicker? You'll never guess what his mom is... (Drake’s mother is Jewish.)
- covercash 2y agoWhat’s more likely, an Amazon owned company blocking Israeli accounts on moral/ethical grounds or some backend technical reason? My guess is the latter…
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoOr one employee being an activist and sneaking in a config change.
- covercash 2y agoIf we’re getting specific, a botnet in the region creating accounts might trigger a precautionary lock down like this.
- _DeadFred_ 2y agoUp until recently support responded to tickets of people asking why they couldn't sign up telling them they were forbidden to join. So it was at least semi-official and allowed as a reason for closing support tickets.
- Sabinus 2y ago[flagged]
- downWidOutaFite 2y ago[flagged]
- dtquad 2y agoYeah I'm sure FnF and Sneako are just progressive pro-Palestine activists. Hasan the Turkish nationalist promoting anti-Jewish terrorism to his American underage viewers is also just "anti-zionism".
- Hikikomori 2y agoThis is exactly what he meant. Showing Israel killing civilians on stream is not anti Jewish terrorism.
- dtquad 2y ago[flagged]
- Hikikomori 2y agoLying? I didn't even mention or talk about those people. "He" being the guy you responded to, saying that you cannot be against Israel's genocide and Zionist mission without being called an anti semite. Both of your replies are examples of what Zionists usually do, thank you for showing us again. And I don't even know who Sneako or FNF is, what they've done or said, or if they should be banned or not.
- daedrdev 2y agoOr the less insane answer is that there are some people who are antisemetic under the cover of being anti war and there are other people who call those who are anti war antisemetic
- kuschku 2y agoA possible explanation might be an automated anti-botnet system running wild. Israel and Palestine are an edge case with a comparatively small population and very active cyberwarfare groups, leading to a relatively high amount of bot traffic. But even that's quite a stretch, as the error message suggests a country-wide block instead of blocking one or a few ISPs.
- dtquad 2y agoA lot of pro-Palestinian online activism actually comes from the Israeli IP ranges. There are two million Palestinians with Israeli citizenship inside Israel and they are free to do pro-Palestinian activism as long as it doesn't call for the destruction of Israel or supports groups listed as terror groups. These kind of IP range blocks tend to hurt the people they intended to help.
- daedrdev 2y agoRumors say it was explicitly blocked on an alleged github push
- lampeli 2y agoI don't usually comment on here, I just lurk but this whole week has been super weird when it comes to twitch. Letting antisemites back on the platform, never punishing people literally spreading terrorist propaganda. Destiny (the streamer not the game) alleges that this block has been in place since october 13th of last year, but for now the only solid proof is that it has been in place since may of this year so take that with a grain of salt. edit: oh yeah forgot about the racial tier list platform at a sponsored official event lol
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoRacial tier list? Jayzus, I don’t want to invoke Godwin, but it sort of invokes itself…
- throwaway19972 2y ago> Letting antisemites back on the platform, never punishing people literally spreading terrorist propaganda. Surely we can engage in this topic without resorting to blatantly inflammatory language.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- heyheyhouhou 2y agoIt is well known that Israel uses botnets and user-controlled fake accounts to steer public opinion in social media. Reddit, youtube, instagram and lots of media outlets are flooded with pro-israeli propaganda or massive downvoting to any critizism against Israel. Also here in hacker news...
- wslh 2y ago> It is well known that Israel... It is well known that any cybersecurity aware country... here I point to some papers/articles [1][2][3] just as a reference of the modus operandi, not to isolate a particular country. [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.07109 https://arxiv.org/pdf/1507.07109 [2] https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/gf7jb/download https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/gf7jb/download [3] https://www.foi.se/download/18.6b6fc4521690ffa2022169/1550764502501/Political-bots-Swedish_election_FOI-S--5937--SE.pdf https://www.foi.se/download/18.6b6fc4521690ffa2022169/155076...
- Hikikomori 2y agoHey now, the ones on hackernews probably do it for free on their own time.
- dzhiurgis 2y agoOn company time
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoHere on HN I tend to see the opposite: lots of staunch anti-israelism, sometimes bordering on plain old antisemitism, along with these statements like yours. I have showdead and showflagged enabled, yet I don’t see the flood of propaganda you keep talking about.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- covercash 2y agoI imagine @dang is pretty on top of clapping antisemitic comments on this platform, he’s not one to mess around. I worry that softening the definition of antisemitism by saying things border on it is ultimately weakening the severity of the accusation long term. Like bigot and pedo, antisemite will soon be relegated to just another empty accusation before long.
- gcau 2y agoThere is context that makes this not just look like a simple technical issue. Twitch promotes a certain twitch streamer who is openly and brazenly supportive of hamas terrorists, and has said some very evil things, and spread a lot of disinformation, by any measure violating many rules. Then there is the 2 people being unbanned that others mentioned, both of which doing similar things. Interestingly, the first person I mentioned is far-left, and these 2 people (atleast one of them) are far right. So it definitely goes beyond just looking like an innocent error in my eyes. I can't think of any logical reason whatsoever they'd ban israelis intentionally.
- Hikikomori 2y agoCan recommend the Bad Hasbara podcast if you want to listen to a sane discussion on Israeli propaganda, only a tiny amount of penis jokes. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-hasbara-the-worlds-most-moral-podcast/id1721813926 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bad-hasbara-the-worlds...
- kalkin 2y agoThe Twitter account posting this seems a bit unhinged, with the snitch tagging of everyone from th ADL to the ACLU and the weird speculation about a "purple haired" person. I'm not inclined to take their description of the scope of the block at face value; is there a better source? (Also, Twitch is within their rights to decide in which countries they offer their service, and there could be any number of reasons for that kind of decision.)
- invalidname 2y agoFYI Purple haired person is the Israeli nickname for Netanyahu. He dyes his hair and it occasionally picks up a purple tint. It's silly and childish, there's plenty of horrible things to say about him other than his appearance. It's not about Twitch having a right to block a country. It's stealth blocking which seems contradictory to their parent companies policy. There are a lot of complaints against Amazon in this regard e.g. an Amazon employee is a hostage in Gaza yet people aren't allowed to mention his name within Amazon. This is in stark contrast to nvidia which also has an employee hostage in Gaza.
- kalkin 2y agoIn context the thing about a purple-haired person is about a hypothetical Twitch trust-and-safety employee, not about Netanyahu.
- cherry_tree 2y agoTwitch has resolved the issue affecting both Israeli and Palestinian users per their latest tweet: https://x.com/TwitchSupport/status/1848191418377830708 https://x.com/TwitchSupport/status/1848191418377830708