Elitist, Racist AND Dictatorial Country Restrictions

[lutinx10]

Before making this post, I would like to say that I have read all the posts about country restrictions.

I travel a lot and wanted to create a blog about my trips. I am a culture historian, so I travel and relate curiosities about what I learn in each country. So I came here a couple months ago, and created the account for my blog. But I had an accident in Africa and lost my net access, and when I managed to have internet back the site was gone.

I can deal with that.

Back in France I decided to make yet another attempt to create the site, and much for my horror, the country was banned.

Seeing the comments of everybody here, the people asking, suggesting and protesting, and all the administration does is to "shrug it off" and assume the "this is not open to discussion" position.

How pitiful, how pathetic. I wholeheartedly agree with Killer Gabriel's post found here: http://x10hosting.com/forums/feedback-suggestions/180528-change-country-restriction-rules.html. This is the worst and most pure form of discrimination. Out of a whole planet, only individuals of 8 countries are allowed to sign up for this free service. I can only wonder if Argentinians, Brazilians, the whole Latin and South America, the whole lot of Africans and some other Europeans were born with three ears or five foot or something.

Because mate, in good plain english, the vast majority of ASSHOLES are all gathered in USA. The biggest thieves, the worse educational methods, the biggest crime rate, the biggest incidents of child abuse (specially by parents), the most famous evil hackers, the biggest rate of software piracy, the worst criminals, etc etc etc are all in US. The worst show of money waste (investing in SPACE while people beg in the streets of big cities like New York, for example), are there. The biggest rate of foreign discrimination (they are only good as tourists to spend money and they have to pay a fortune for the visa) is there. People say US is tolerant with immigrants, but if an immigrant loves and embraces their putrid culture, they accuse the foreigner immigrant of "theft", not of "attempt of inclusion". if they don't and remain within their own cultural habits (Chinese, Jews), they are cast out as unwanted ANYWAY. And on top of that, they cut short freedom of expression, limiting to allow only flattery! If someone gives a "negative" opinion - like mine just here - they will find anything they can to accuse you of bullying, harassment, defamation, slander, libel... you freaking name it. Oh, I can go on. I can top this cake with the cherry of SHAME: they cry and make a freaking carnival over their September 11, but payback is a b***h: they FORGET, quite conveniently so, to "celebrate" also the massacre they did with Hiroshima and Nagasaki with the nuclear bomb, little shorter than a month before (beginning of august), and not surprisingly the kids on those cities TODAY still have genetic issues while the sons and daughters of Pearl Harbor are very healthy in their generation! And they forget that for us, outsiders, "thanksgiving" is NOT gather around a table to give thanks for what you have: in US story it is quite clear that thanksgiving is to give thanks for the MASSACRE of the Natives to steal their lands. I can add more cherries: you f*****g retards send your soldiers to war, and when the soldiers come back you treat them like s***! But if they killed kids and others in OUR lands, THEY KILLED FOR YOU!!!!! How much farther from hypocrisy can that be? You invade other countries, intrude OUR affairs - with which right? WHO invited you? NO ONE! You say that other countries shouldn't have bombs? What makes you so special? Give the example and disarm YOURS, then politely (ops, do they even know the word?) ASK other countries to do the same! They judge people by appearance, and yes, by country of birth! I heard a JUDGE of LAW telling the american husband that beat the crap of the Latino wife, with her face all purple, bandages all over, ribs fractured, a lung punctured: "And who is going to believe you? Any scum from us is far better than any 'good person' from your country". I SAW THIS SHAME, I RECORDED IT. I was invited once to a Christmas meal and one of the guys told his brother after giving him a gift: "dude, you know how it goes. I just gave you a nice gift. You should have gotten me something better, too." I saw american people charging for gifts, charging to help others! I saw people in homeless shelter denying food for a beggar because the beggar was Canadian. CANADIAN, imagine!!! Mexicans, oh God. The Mexicans had to PAY for a soup in a FREE SOUP LINE!!! Man, Stop charging for freebies!

Speaking of freebies, "don't complain it is free" doesn't really serve you right anymore. Dear US, do you remember the load of rotten meat you sent to Africa, that killed several people, moms, children, family fathers that work harder than you could ever dream? Do you remember what you told the PRESS from Europe AFTER you killed so many people with your freebies? "It is free, they shouldn't complain", US lawyers said. I HAVE THE INTERVIEW ON DVD!!!!!!!!!!

Man, I so could go on. After all I lived in freaking US for 20 out of my 50 years of life, that is more than I ever stayed in only one land, studying and trying to UNDERSTAND what made USA such a "powerful" nation. I have NO idea. I rule out "respect for others" in favor of Elitism, Blackmail, Bigotry, and a very well disguised hypocrite THEFT - of morals, of land, or anything else. No wonder US is always in the news of each country, whereas most countries only have their own news to show: US shoves their p****s everywhere. USA "RAPES" the world. That's what I have learned in 20 years breathing their air, feeding of their food, and trying to deal with their people.

The only good thing US people have, after all that s***, is that even KNOWING this whole crap about themselves, they are patriotic to the point of fanaticism, to the point of claiming the word for themselves.

Got news for you guys. USA is NOTHING but HITLER NAZI 2.0. The same "not open for discussion" attitude, right after banning the "inadequate ones" (us) out of your servers. What comes next? Your private gas chambers via ISP tracker? Because you already have that with the death penalty for the inadequate people physically present in your physical territory.

I have left USA disgusted, but hell, first there was the Roman Empire, then there was The Church, and then there was Hitler. Now we have USA. What else is missing here?

Beware... today they ban the world, tomorrow they bomb us all with nuclear bombs too. They think they will be free of the sequels? Guess. Just GUESS.

Guys, you should be trying TO MAKE PEACE with the rest of us. Not add to our despise. Is it not good enough that when your president comes to our countries, they are received with "go home" boards, shoes thrown and other clear signs that YOU ARE NOW THE MOST HATED NATION IN THIS PLANET, and your f*****g "power" will lead you NOWHERE, FAST, if you don't start earning SOME friends, through friendly interactions? And why can't it start with your services? Because you know, it takes brick by brick to build a wall, but it takes the removal of ONE for all the others fall back on your head. You should put your brick to help US to have friendly interactions, and not remove one brick to have the wall fall on you - and here I am helping it fall.

You come to speak of banning countries in your servers due to ABUSE?? Holy s***, YOU ABUSE THE END USER when you refuse to even TALK ABOUT IT, or analyze case by case. Oh it is many? Oh you need rules? Excellent. Everybody needs rules. But surely there are MANY ways to do so. Hire volunteers and offer them extra free space for their time filtering the suggested request for a site! So many GOOD suggestions on your own forums, and you just close them and cast them out without even listening?

Bigotry! Prejudice!! Dictatorship!!! HITLER 2.0!!!!!!

SHAME ON YOU USA!! SHAME ON YOU SERVERS ADMINISTRATORS!!!!!!

As for me, I challenge you to leave this subject open for all to read, while I will remove my account to never return. I had promised to never return to US while alive - US and I don't need each other really - but if I have to see this pathetic show that nothing had improved in the mentality of you americans that "own a little something" towards my fellow foreigners, I really don't want to be using this services anymore. If I cannot remove my account on my free will, feel free to ban me!

Matter of fact? f*****g go to hell and shove this service up the ass.

Respectfully,

Proudly EX customer.

 

[Sharky]

It's a shame you're not coming back as I'd have liked to read your articles.

I have also done a better job of masking the more ... 'adult' words as there are a number of younger users here. Whilst I'm sure they've heard it all before that's not the point.

Also, I do see your point, but denying users access to a WEB HOSTING SERVICE is not the same as denying them access to life. Sadly, I am informed that there are statistics to demonstrate that your fellow countrymen (and those from the other countries on the blacklist) statistically use a disproportionate amount of man-hours for dealing with disallowed content including dealing with copyright and DMCA. Yes, I understand that DMCA is a USA issue, but x10Hosting is a company based in the USA. This is not the same as cases such as certain popular bittorrent tracking service where USA agencies were meddling with foreign companies (and now sadly UK ISPs have blocked access completely - so much for free speech and open access without censorship in the 'free west'......)

My final point is that x10Hosting does not run with a huge number of support staff; free hosting is mostly run by volunteers, the perks of which include getting a free x10Premium hosting plan. It's not much, but there's not a lot asked of. Having to deal with rule-breakers means the service provided to other customers suffers.

@others: please don't just delete this because of it's content without reading...

 

[Corey]

This has been discussed many times and my answer remains the same. When countries decide to start policing their user's activities on the internet we will more apt to allow them to sign-up.

The amount of fraud, not even taking copyright infringement into account - but flat out phishing, hacking attacks, child pornography, botnets, etc coming from countries such as Nigeria, Brazil, China, Iran, Iraq... is ridiculous. Users from theses countries are free to do whatever illegal activity they want on the internet because the governments do not reprimand them. The risk of them getting in trouble for participating in illegal activities is extremely low. I completely understand there are users from these countries that do not participate in this type of activity, however any country blocked at this time has a fraud rate of 80% or higher. That means that over 80% of sign-ups from the country resulted in suspensions for illegal activity. The overhead for us as a business and the negative impact on other users is extremely high from this.

x10Hosting offers the least restricted free hosting on the internet, we do not block email, we do not block a ridiculous amount of PHP functions, we do not block fsockopen... the list goes on. It would either come down to we do not offer free hosting, or we restrict our services so severely to prevent abuse that it negatively impacts all of our other users.

As I've said *many* times before. When the governments of these countries start taking a stance against the illegal actions of their residents we will be happy to welcome them back with open arms. Until then we have to protect ourselves and our other users, unfortunately the easiest way to do this with the limited resources of a *free hosting* company is to disallow signups from the country as a whole.

My only real reply to you is that you should probably get all the facts before launching into a hate filled rant about stuff you do not understand.

 

[killergabriel22]

He did, that's why he wrote this.
Can't you just accept criticism and admit that you're discriminating people without reason, aside from their country of residence?

 

[Sharky]

killergabriel22: Thanks for replying to this. Please read Corey's response - sadly the blocks are not without reason.

Key quote:

I completely understand there are users from these countries that do not participate in this type of activity, however any country blocked at this time has a fraud rate of 80% or higher. That means that over 80% of sign-ups from the country resulted in suspensions for illegal activity. The overhead for us as a business and the negative impact on other users is extremely high from this.

I have highlighted the key points in bold.

 

[killergabriel22]

Check my latest thread Accept Criticism for a more complete answer; here's a small tidbit.

He also says that the blacklisted countries are the one who abuse X10 servers the most...and, frankly, that's impossible, because it's impossible that every single country inside the blacklist in a certain time span, aside from the 8 you accept, provokes the same amount of abuse in the same way at the same time (the servers would already have crashed without chance of recovery a long time ago).

I think that says it all.

 

[Corey]

Check my latest thread Accept Criticism for a more complete answer; here's a small tidbit.



I think that says it all.

Says all of what? That makes absolutely no sense and it clearly comes from someone that has little to no understanding on how things work.

It's very easy, we have 8 years of data. Looking back at the past *1 year* we can easily sort our data and see which countries had the highest suspension rates for non automated reasons such as inactivity. That data coupled with numerous other reports we're able to pull paints a very clear picture of why a majority of people sign up from the banned countries.

You're welcome to think whatever you want, what it comes down to is as a business we have the choice to provide service to whomever we want. Our decision was made to increase the quality of service, nothing more. We've tried allowing *every* country to sign-up, we had open sign-ups for 6 years before implementing a very short blacklist of countries. That failed to work so we took the drastic route and banned all countries that have shown high risk behavior this past year.

The best thing about the internet? If you don't like our policies you're welcome to go elsewhere. Or better yet, start your own hosting company and allow open signups. Maybe that will give you the perspective you are sorely lacking.

 

[killergabriel22]

That failed to work so we took the drastic route and banned all countries that have shown high risk behavior this past year.

I admit my knowledge of the subject is very low, but I find it unbelievable that 188 countries show the same amount of high risk behavior at the same time of a certain period (whereas 8 countries never have that problem); how can you be so sure of that data?

 

[Corey]

The current allowed countries do have abuse, however in terms of good signups vs abusive signups the ratio is low. I am 100% sure of the data because it is recorded by us, we're not using a 3rd party. Every signup is logged by the system with the IP it came from. Every suspension is also logged, it's easy to sort suspensions by country and even drill down to the most popular reasons for suspensions.

This is a business decision, nothing more. I would love to accept signups from the whole world, I would love if there was no abuse. It would make things a lot easier for us. The unfortunate reality is that what is normal in other countries breaks the laws here where our servers are, and where we are registered as a business. Just as an example here are two countries:

Nigeria's suspension rate was over 95% before we blocked them. That means that out of 100 signups from Nigeria 95 of them were participating in illegal activity such as phishing, 419 scams, spamming, etc.

Nigeria is known for scams, they even have the term 'nigerian scam' coined. I watched a documentary where kids in middle school on lunch break would call people in the US trying to pull scams, that is how "normal" it is there.

China's suspension rate was over 90%. The majority of Chinese suspensions were proxies, nulled scripts, and warez\copyright infringement in general. There are only so many DMCAs and copyright claims we can deal with before companies start looking at us to be liable for hosting the material.

If you've traveled to China it is the land of copyright infringement... you can buy a knock off anything there. The mentality of it being OK to use a nulled\illegal script or someone elses work without permission is normal behavior there and this behavior shows online.

When China was allowed to signup, we would sometimes receive 500 new users per day from just that one country. When over 400 of those new users were set out to either perform actions that disrupt the services for everyone else (spamming, torrenting, carrying out external attacks) or to just participate in other illegal activity, the choices how to deal with it are limited. Remember we are offering a service for free, dealing with disruptive actions, never mind the legal repercussions and complaints takes a lot of time.

Just last year we almost lost a whole free server due to an FBI investigation we were subpoened in. I am certain if we didn't institute the initial country block a year or so ago we would have lost a server to the FBI or another government organization by now. In that case I am completely unsure how I would respond to over 10,000 upset free hosting customers that did nothing wrong when the server they are on is confiscated.


People need to understand the reasoning behind decisions before throwing out words like 'racist'. Our decision for the country blocks is based on facts from data over a long period of time. It's quick and easy to bash a company when you know nothing of how it works.

One thing I never see with threads like these, why not offer your own solution to the problem instead of just complaining about ours. Think something is broken or needs to be fixed? Offer up a solution to fix it. The energy used in the tantrum thrown by the original author of the thread could have been used in a thought provoking discussion, instead they went off on some crazy tangents about nazis - which in turn helps no one. I honestly have no idea what the thought process was behind the post, did they think we would read that hate filled and ridiculous post and suddenly change our policies? No. Not going to happen.

 

[silverbird775]

First let me express my gratitude to x10hosting for a best hosting up to date! Your hosting service is easy to use and reliable furthermore it keeps improving. That makes the confidence in x10 and builds a trust likewize a personal relationship. Simply enjoyable.
Still there is some odd inconsistencies exist within perfectness. Although the country restriction policy is fair and comprehensible, it fits the othewise friendly service the most unnatural way. The raither harsh cut off policy leaves no options for a good people to join in.
The invitation tickets could possibly ease the joining in for a newcomers from a High Risk countries. The applicants may initiate the discussion for their future resources, on what they are going or trying to do, share some examples. It is thrilling to know who your neighbours would be also it has to be something for a common good. I'm sure that most of the x10 elders would not mind some substantial projects to join in. The raither weak and senseless presentations may be rejected by elders, no big deal. Non user attactive presentations with no responses at all can be safely rejected as well. The very same thread may serve as a general welcome thread and early troubleshooting as well. IMO the presentation\welcome thread may both revitalize the forum and give the opportunities to join in for users from a High Risk countries.

Technically it may work like this, all of High Risk countries join in suspended with the only viable option to create a ticket within a special welcome subforum where they may share their presentation and welcome others and collect their yeah & noes from elders, power users. In case of mass spamming or moderation resources shortage the High Risk zone could be shrinked as well.

In my humble opinion the 'user making good to user' policy is always better, it stimulate the interaction and hosting synergy growth. By no means i'm a hosting expert so all of written above was just a thought flight.

 

[dave18]

One thing I never see with threads like these, why not offer your own solution to the problem instead of just complaining about ours. Think something is broken or needs to be fixed? Offer up a solution to fix it. The energy used in the tantrum thrown by the original author of the thread could have been used in a thought provoking discussion, instead they went off on some crazy tangents about nazis - which in turn helps no one.

Can't help but agree there. Alas for some people, it's conveniently easier to complain over things they don't necessarily understand or even care other than their own (somewhat understandably) selfish interests.

A somewhat funny part about the OP's first and last rant post is we that all essentially "discriminate" in one form or another. We discriminate or choose who we associate with, who we allow in our premises, etc.

But that part about nazis? Totally unnecessary, hate-filled, unproductive, ignorant, and serves no helpful purpose other than to allow one to vent and unnecessarily create more ill will than there already is.

Also alas, this sort of thing is going to keep happening as long as hateful, selfish, ignorant people are abound and - worse - are unwilling to learn or at least be remotely open-minded as to how or why these things tend to happen. Such is life.

Anywho, I want to thank the X10Hosting people for this valuable service. Maybe someday when I can afford it, I'll invest in your paid solutions.

Cheers.

 

[garrettroyce]

Op -

Your anti-USA stance is way more bigoted than even the outlandish claims you make of X10. You claim that X10 is profiling based on stereotypes, but base your claim on stereotypes.

You sir, are a hypocrite and an ignorant one at that

 

[dave18]

Op -

Your anti-USA stance is way more bigoted than even the outlandish claims you make of X10. You claim that X10 is profiling based on stereotypes, but base your claim on stereotypes.

You sir, are a hypocrite and an ignorant one at that

Nah, don't bother. The OP just posted to foolishly and needlessly vent, that's all.

If anything, other members who feel like venting this way ought to think long and hard before clicking the Submit Reply button.

 

[gameaddict2085]

I think the free and paid hosting is brilliant, and made better for all the extra features open because x10 block abusers via there Country Restrictions.
Also I commend x10 for blocking people like the op from hosting

 

[emilnech]

Hi, although I'm a newbie in this forum, i feel there is still an option that has not been tested. I believe the main purpose to have a free hosting is to get people to upgrade. I have a friend that has built a free template and was getting a lot of donations. He was talking with me about his great hosting, thinking of upgrade and after a few days, puff, his site was gone (his forum started to grow and send too many emails per day, hosting considering this as spam). He lost all his community because of not setting correctly his forum. Learning from his mistake tried to join x10hosting but residing in Belgium seemed to be a bad option (sure, he could go in a vacation in Spain and join from there...). Anyway, I know and would like to refer this person. More, his website is back online on a local hosting (including source code) so you'll already know what you'll get on your servers. But there is no way I can send him an invite. I would be happy to be allowed to send an invite every 6 months or maybe every year. More, you could record all my referred users and know quickly exactly what user is to blame. Losing the ability to invite friends and even a suspension while the country still being banned will solve any issues and still give an option for you to sill make money. Therefore, from those 10% of people that don't break the rules, you can build a community of people that are (or are trying to be) most likely honest professional website builders. And these users have a very high statistical chance of upgrading. It's just that right now even if I, from a banned country respect the rules i just can't tell a friend to test your services even if he will most likely upgrade. Just let those honest 10% do the filtering for you and you can easily control from there.
PS. If there is a possibility for my friend to join x10hosting services, please contact me in private or email so I don't post here the website to be considered spam. Consider this a serious (well, in the limitations of a forum post), public request.

 

[essellar]

It's not that easy. The only reliable way to do the block/restriction is by refusing IP address blocks (and yes, a proxy detection is part of the process), so a referral won't work. The alternative would be to ask people which country they're signing up from, and hoping that if they're coming from a blocked or restricted country they'll say so truthfully (like that's going to happen).

It is unfortunate that things have to be this way. The restricted account experiment on Lotus didn't work out well, though. You can bet that if there were a cost-effective way to service other countries, they'd be doing it, but if it costs more to support an area than they can possibly hope to make up in upgrades to paid plans, then it's a charity, not a business. And that leaves out the effort required to keep the servers off of spam, malware and search engine blacklists. (They're all incredibly easy to get onto and incredibly difficult to get off of.)

 

[emilnech]

It's not that easy. The only reliable way to do the block/restriction is by refusing IP address blocks (and yes, a proxy detection is part of the process), so a referral won't work.

I can't advocate for something that is out of comment or at least out of discussion. And my argument is that I'm not actually doing quite that, considering that the ideea is to add to the concept and not remove anything that's already in place. I totally agree that a company can impose it's own restricitons sees fit to make money only if those restrictions don't affect the "making money" buisness. Indeed, an IP blocking with very good proxy detection will solve the problems of spam/other illicit activities and, if added on top of this, the referring system can stream to x10hosting, users with high probability to upgrade, that are durring a start-up or, are most likely using other hosting services for which they have a certain unsatisfaction. The ban to the service can still be done in the usual way it's already been done, just an additional access to the services option be included. Everyone can see that x10hosting is offering high quality services but you know that most professionals users don't bother to search for a new hosting when they already have one and only do that if they have problems, but if their country is blocked for testing, they will try something else. More, is encouraging the free users who never upgrade to promote x10hosting, thus giving them a purpose that makes money in the end. I strongly belive that only bloking IP's solves keeping a high quality service and to solve money losing problem more clever ways to attract "high rollers" need to be implemented.

 

[essellar]

The best way to accomplish that is customer goodwill and word-of-mouth (or word-of-footer, more likely). Admittedly, I come from a background where hosting isn't easy to find, is often horrifically expensive when you do find it, and switching hosts on a whim (as is so very easy in the LAMP world) is not easy. When we found a host that scratched our itches and soothed our pains, we'd usually give them a nod -- when they allowed it. (And they usually vetted hosting mentions, since a poorly-coded, slow and sloppy application would hardly be a good showcase for their services. As with PHP+MySQL, the platform in question had a low barrier to entry and a whole smorgasbord of ways to do things very wrongly; bubble sorts and Schlemiel the Painter's algorithms abound even though efficient sorts of various types and collection traversals were built into the toolset.)

Perhaps a bit of encouragement for exceptional sites (high traffic/high function/low resource) to mention hosting might help at all levels of service (from the basic shared hosting, through Infinity+ and eventually managed VPS -- it's a bit of a reach to take credit for unmanaged VPS that way, but it's something a site owner might mention if the price/performance ratio is something they appreciate).

 

[chewett]

One thing I never see with threads like these, why not offer your own solution to the problem instead of just complaining about ours. Think something is broken or needs to be fixed? Offer up a solution to fix it. The energy used in the tantrum thrown by the original author of the thread could have been used in a thought provoking discussion, instead they went off on some crazy tangents about nazis - which in turn helps no one. I honestly have no idea what the thought process was behind the post, did they think we would read that hate filled and ridiculous post and suddenly change our policies? No. Not going to happen.

Have you considered permitting registrations from those countries after receiving more information such as why they want the account and different assurances? Make it take time to do and not a quick 5 minute automatic setup.

I would think that the majority of people who are from these countries and want to participate in legal website hosting would spend some time to actually prove their intent provided they knew the good service of x10. Those who just want to spam will not be bothered by the long process and just go to the many other hosting sites.

 

[killergabriel22]

Have you considered permitting registrations from those countries after receiving more information such as why they want the account and different assurances?.....The majority of people who are from these countries and want to participate in legal website hosting would spend some time to actually prove their intent provided they knew the good service of x10. Those who just want to spam will not be bothered by the long process and just go to the many other hosting sites.

I agree with the whole discussion, but I have to reply to chewett: have you considered that people lie? Especially scammers who, knowing perfectly that what they do is illegal, perfected the "art"; they'll just say they need a site to host their photos and/or blog and, since you can't look at people's faces in emails, how can you be sure they aren't lying?

From this point of view, I still cannot yet fully understand - I still think they made a too drastic of a decision - but I simpathyze a little bit.