Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web • Hacker News Board

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#81

Post by piramida » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:27 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #37

piramida wrote: post #19

Not only Nigeria, may I point out that most countries of the world, besides the very few top ones (US, Canada, Japan, Australia and Eurozone countries) are in about the same position regarding e-commerce and web acceptance in general. You can't start a paypal account, you can't pay online with locally issued credit cards, and you generally are prejudiced as a criminal. Which must be contributing to the online crime c…

> Which must be contributing to the online crime coming from this countries, since if you are already treated as a thief, why not just be one? :) There is absolutely no logic to that statement. Not being allowed to do business on a site because your country has a statistically high incidence of fraud is not the same as being treated as a thief. Being treated as a thief would mean to be wrongfully prosecuted for a cri…

There is quite a lot of logic and I'm sorry that I was so brief that my point escaped almost everybody here. Both merchants and customers are "statistically" equated to criminals, forced to do any online business in a closed ghetto. Which does not leave much business opportunities.

Going to an analogy which might make it easier to understand, say you live in Oakland, CA, and by law you can not open a bank account or possess a weapon because your neighborhood has statistically higher crime rate.

I understand people usually don't care much being on the other side of the fence, you lose what, 10% of sales maximum. But please try the mental exercise of being a well-intentioned business on another side.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#82

Post by Vivtek » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:28 PM UTC

araneae wrote: post #26

mycroftiv wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I interpret the sentiment, the author is indicating that he is writing simply to express his frustration at being an innocent victim of collective punishment. He is stating that he is aware of the causes of the situation, and that there may be ways to engage in productive change, but neither of those things changes the basic personal injustice he is directly experiencing. In other words, he is not attempting to ma…

But instead of saying that, he said "fuck you" which is more open to interpretation, I think.

Well. He said "fuck off," not "fuck you." To be fair, there's less interpretation. It's a rant, not an argument.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#83

Post by Vivtek » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:30 PM UTC

tylerarnold wrote: post #40

rsheridan6 wrote: post #3

"I cannot ignore two very fair arguments. The amount of fraud from this end has necessitated these measures. Hey! That’s a gap in the market, why don’t you guys in Africa do something about it?0 Fuck off." That's really not a very convincing counterargument.

I'm having the exact same issue while traveling in Romania. Romania is a part of the European Union as well. It's incredibly frustrating just to sit there and get "unable to process." What a crappy error message too. How about "this is a suspicious transaction. Please call GoDaddy or join a LiveChat session to continue." It really feels second class. Fuck indeed!

Try joker.com. They're at least European and might have heard of Romania.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#84

Post by Hoff » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 6:52 PM UTC

BoppreH wrote: post #28

MichaelGG wrote: post #21

Yes, browsing via a proxy or VPN while not in the US is just common practice for plenty of folks. Apart from fraud flagging, the sites that geo-IP for language settings is very annoying. (Seriously, the IETF actually gets Accept-Language right, it's actually implemented, and then ignored?? Sigh.) Google Chrome takes the cake here though. They use your IP to determine the install language. Even if you download the US…

It works well for normal people. And these options can be configured from the "under the hood" preferences tab.

Normal? With languages?

Normal is an ATM that doesn't know to look on my card or at my account data for my language. At my own bank. Ok, so maybe prompt for that and set that once. But then prompting me every single time I use that same card in the bank's own ATMs? Duh.

Normal is an IP-based language selection that fails for non-native speakers, or for regions where the populations where there are multiple languages.

Normal is a language chooser box implemented with the available languages listed in English.

Normal is US ASCII encodings and sort orders, when you're not running with English selected.

Normal is not being able to select your default language and spellings and related grammar checks on the fly, and on a per-document basis.

Normal is English text labels within images and icons.

More than a few of these systems will barf in creative ways when you toss UTF-8 at them, too.

Normal is a scheme a programmer or IT specialist can use to alter a mass deployment implemented as the main user interface, rather than as a design suitable for the end-user first and IT second.

Yes, we can do a better normal, too.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#85

Post by tomjen3 » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 7:05 PM UTC

microarchitect wrote: post #48

damoncali wrote: post #34

This will all go away when Nigerians stop the fraud. It's really that simple (or that complex, depending on your point of view). Like many of Africa's problems, this one is systemic.

So what do you suggest an ordinary citizen should do? Don a cape and black mask and hunt the scammers down?!

Thats not a bad idea - it will cut down on fraud at least.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#86

Post by quanticle » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 7:35 PM UTC

kakaylor wrote: post #73

Duff wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GDP isn't the issue with Africa and the number of Western companies that want nothing to do with the continent. The issue is the governments like Nigeria are completely incapable of regulating what goes on inside of its borders. In cases like Nigeria, where the "419" scam is actually an measurably significant industry within the country, the scammers are probably in cahoots with the authorities. Why does e-commerce w…

Very good point. I think the point on corruption and the rule of law is really significant. It goes beyond just e-commerce and into a whole economy. A government of men and not of law does not make for a thriving economy. If found these two maps on corruption and governance really interesting. They really speak to they trouble with doing e-commerce in Africa: Transparency International: http://www.transparency.org/po…

I don't know about China or Brazil, but India has done pretty well in fighting corruption lately. Of course, there's still a long way to go, but the progress so far is encouraging.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#87

Post by dogcoffee » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 7:36 PM UTC

It's not limited to Nigeria, either. I experienced the same frustrating roadblocks while trying to develop websites on an East African island. (A Small Orange treated me with particular injustice based on my location and I will never get the bad taste out of my mouth when I see their name.)

However, I can't offer a better solution than taking a civil approach to vetting/rejection in case the customer is a real, innocent human being. And that doesn't seem like much of a solution.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#88

Post by aristus » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 7:55 PM UTC

kakaylor wrote: post #80

aristus wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the same reasoning used 10 years ago to write off South America as a rounding error. It was frustrating and wrongheaded then, too.

I understand what your saying, but I am not sure I agree (at least from the US perspective) that South America has been written off as a rounding error in the last few decades. I think we have been on a trajectory from the early 1990's (starting with NAFTA) and continuing into the early 2000's (with the start of CAFTA) to today where we are near ratifying CAFTA. The next step is a full South American free trade agree…

I respectfully disagree. We're not talking bananas and sugar, we're talking US companies being unwilling to make the effort to sell to people in other countries.

I worked on Terespondo, a search advertising company focussed on SA from 2002-ish to 2006. We were thirty dorks who happened to speak the language, and we captured 65% of a continent-wide market. Why?

- MS AdCenter didn't get multilingual support until 2008 or so.

- Google Adwords required a US credit card until 2004 or 5.

- Overture (Yahoo) were idiots.

It's gotten much better in the last ten years.

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#89

Post by adolph » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 7:56 PM UTC

markessien wrote: post #8

dangrossman wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is PayPal dominating? The number of sites that accept credit cards dwarfs the (overlapping) number of sites that accept PayPal for payment.

Nigerian issued credit/debit cards (mastercard/visa) don't work internationally, so can't be used to pay for online items.

Why is that?

Re: Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web

#90

Post by quanticle » Sun, Jan 23, 2011, 8:00 PM UTC

barrkel wrote: post #29

yummyfajitas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paypal, Google adwords, and many other services, do use statistical predictors to determine what is likely to be fraud. Many innocent people get flagged by them. This is a known and accepted risk of using such services. The fact is, if Paypal were not permitted to statistically discriminate, they wouldn't exist. Is it really a moral travesty that they are using nation of origin as one of the predictors?

It's unjust, particularly because "being a Nigerian in Nigeria" is not a condition that most people in that condition can simply elect to remove themselves from. Consider the situation from a Rawlsian veil of ignorance perspective.

Try explaining that perspective to your spouse after you lose money in a 419 scam. "But honey, I didn't know that this Nigerian was a con-artist. I had to give him a chance!"