Amazon shut down his account immediately after.
Plus, it also offers tools that make it easier for them to run their apps.
It’s free, every week, in your inbox.
He wasnt the only developer whose AWS account was shut down.
You might not know it, but Amazon runs basically half the internet on their cloud platform.
It is painful for me to hear how trade restrictions have hurt people.
GitHub is subject to US trade law, just like any company that does business in the US.
Over the past couple of years, they used cloud services like AWS and GitHub to host their code.
However, theres a long history of censorship and internet surveillancein Iran.
In the same year, the authorities blocked eight other news sites for different reasons.
The country has a long history of blocking communication apps too.
In 2018, Irandisabled calls, video, and imageson the messaging app Telegram.
GitHub hostsseverallistsof websites and services that block any IP addresses from Iran.
At the same time, many popular apps like YouTube are unavailable there.
Most Android users now have to rely onCafe Bazaar, an Iranian app store founded in 2011.
It currently has over40 million users and 164,000 apps.
In 2017, Applestarted removing Iranian appsfrom its App Store for iOS devices.
The ban resulted in several populartaxi-hailing, food delivery, and shopping appsbecoming non-usable.
In Iran, we have so many iOS freelancers, and these sanctions affected them.
Last year, Slack, a popular app for team communication,banned users situated in Iran.
Cafe Bazaar is also in the process of building its own cloud service.
This is an unreliable process and theres no guarantee of getting quality equipment.
They backed off from this policy eventually.
A bunch of users in Iran uses digital circumvention tools such as VPNs and proxy servers to avoid snooping.
However, in May 2018, President Trumpwithdrew from the Iran nuclear dealand reinstated all previously lifted sanctions.
This step has put a lot of pressure on tech companies to deny any services to Iran.
Mozilla, which producesthe Internet Health Reportevery year, decided to omit a whole section on Iran 2019.
We ultimately decided not to publish the piece this year.
Internet users in all countries affected by sanctions are at a huge disadvantage.
A lot of Iranian developers are considering migrating out of the country.
This whole saga brings us to a larger question of Internet freedom and its borderless concept as well.
Technology companies have talked about connecting people across the world for ages.
However, theyve taken a step back under political pressure to block certain territories.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.
That’s one heck of a mixed bag.
He likes to say “Bleh.”
