
Life as a Second Class Citizen of the Web  - OoTheNigerian
http://oonwoye.com/2011/01/23/life-as-a-second-class-citizen-of-the-web/
======
MichaelGG
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 binaries, they use your IP to
determine your local search site and display non-English results.

The real kicker? Chrome then prompts "This page is in <Spanish>. Would you
like to translate it?"

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

~~~
MichaelGG
You're incorrect on both accounts.

First, if my OS and browser preferences are stating English (or any language
for that matter), why should the IP come into play? "Normal" people will
already be using a localized OS and hence will send an Accept-Language with
their preferred language (and perhaps country).

Second, while you can go try to navigate the "Under the Hood" section in
another language to switch languages, the default Google search uses
"{google:baseURL}", which gets hard coded to the localized version someone
though you should be forced to use.

You actually have to delete the default search in the omnibar and create a new
one, manually specifying the Google site you wish to use. There is no quick
option to say "no, your silly auto-detection is broken, use the language I'm
specifying for UI and search".

~~~
BoppreH
Sure, using the OS settings would be the most sane way, but I still see it
working well 9 out of 10 times. Could be a lot better, but I don't think it
deserves "taking the cake" of the localization-challenged software.

And ok, it was my fault for not testing the language option before mentioning
it.

~~~
MichaelGG
Can you clarify when you think it's a good idea to override the user's OS and
browser language settings based on IP registration information? (Chrome's
wording in the languages settings tab is: "Add the languages you use to read
websites, listing in order of preference.")

Also, it's not "localization-challenged". I would be more sympathetic to sites
in general if there was no Accept-Language header, and if geo-IP lookup was
some automatic service baked into every web app library.

But no, sites doing this go out of their way to do this. It's as if there's
some secret coalition of idiot PMs that think adding IP-based language
settings is going to get them a bonus or something.

------
rsheridan6
"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.

~~~
markessien
Hmm, how many paypal killers have been created? Now you want to go create a
paypal killer from an african country with a low internet population, and
expect big sites to support this? I think "fuck off" is an appropriate answer
to people suggesting this - it's just not going to happen! It's obvious that
it won't happen, so anyone suggesting it...just doesn't get it, I guess.

~~~
rmc
Small population? Nigeria has 180 million people. The rest of Africa has
similar paypal issues, and a population of 600 million people

~~~
kakaylor
I think the bigger issue is GDP and GDP per capita for both Nigeria and Africa
as a whole:

Nigeria GDP (PPP): $170bil

Nigeria GDP per capita: $1754

I can understand why e-commerce companies might just choose to blacklist an
entire country. There isn't much of a financial incentive to expend the
resources for that small of a market.

I am not trying to comment on whether this is justifiable or not, but that is
the reality of the situation.

~~~
Duff
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 work in the US? As a guy sitting in New York, how can I
comfortably sell goods via the internet to someone in Hawaii or New Mexico?
Fundamentally, it's because the US is a nation governed by law, and efforts to
defraud are not acceptable.

~~~
kakaylor
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/policy_research/surveys_indices/...](http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/cpi/2010/results)

Governance: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldwide_Governance_Indicators>

I wonder how ratings for China / India / Brazil will change in the next few
decades as their per-capita GDP increases.

~~~
quanticle
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.

------
davelittle
I understand why he is annoyed. I don't have things nearly so bad, but I do
live overseas and use bank accounts in the United States (where I am from) on
a regular basis. It leads to constant fraud flags - which I can, at least,
normally clear up by talking to the companies involved and explaining myself.
Paypal is disagreeable about it, so I've had to give up on using them for the
most part.

Anyway - I agree with him that it's a pain. My solution is to use a VPN, too.
As long as that gets the problem solved I'm happy.

Fraud _IS_ a major concern in general. I don't have the data to even have an
opinion on whether rejecting everything out of Nigeria so aggressively is
justified, but if it was my business, would I flag it for manual inspection?
Absolutely.

I'd also be willing to listen to my customers and manually approve things when
it's justified. I can't really ask for more than that. Now, as I said, I'm
sure the situation if you are coming from Nigeria is even worse. But I think
what he should be asking for is a little more openness in the "manual
validation" area, rather than full up-front acceptance of his transactions. I
don't think asking for that is realistic.

His response to "the amount of fraud necessitates it" is "F you" ... well,
what, is he saying there isn't a fraud problem, or if there is businesses
should ignore it? Please. Give me a break. It's one thing to feel personally
frustrated to that point, but to write it up like it's some kind of answer
won't do anything.

I don't know what answer is better than the status quo, and apparently he
doesn't either. Anyone have a comment on what that might be?

------
markessien
What I dislike about the attitude of many businesses towards Nigeria is the
way they just dismiss the country with a wave of their hand.

Sure, there is some scam coming out of the country, but some guy just looks at
the numbers and then sends an email "Block Nigeria". And we're not talking of
some small site, we're talking of one of the the biggest payment processors in
the world.

The country is the biggest market in Africa, people are quickly getting
connected to the world, it's just not morally right to exclude an entire set
of people in such a dismissive manner.

Think of it this way: imagine that paypal suddenly decided to exclude Arizona
from using Paypal because it has a higher statistical likelihood of fraud. A
lot of people would protest at the unfairness of this action.

But because it's Nigeria, there are very few people to protest.

Paypal is a site that is only useful when everyone uses it. And everyone IS
using it. Once they have entered that stage, it be becomes virtually
impossible for other payment providers to compete effectively. In that
situation, the market cannot solve this problem. There is no niche payment
provider going to pop-up just for Nigeria. Paypal, once it so strongly
dominates the market, has a moral obligation not to exclude anyone from using
their services. It can't just stamp a country as not "allowed to use paypal"

~~~
yummyfajitas
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?

~~~
barrkel
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.

~~~
cturner
This is a broader issue than access to Paypal.

There's lots of reasons it's not great to be a Nigerian in Nigeria - fixed
elections, corruption, violence, low standard of living, tension between the
north and south, nasty tropical diseases, relatively lower education
opportunities, weak arts community, flowover from ethnic tension in
neighbouring states.

In the scale of things, concern over ability to make internet payments is
probably pretty low, and a concern that would be pressing only to a small
elite in the country.

~~~
barrkel
Frankly, I agree. The thrust of my comment was more on backing up the
assertion that treating Nigerians this way is actually unjust, immoral; not
that it doesn't make business sense, or that it's a relatively small slice of
the larger pie, etc.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I'm guessing there is all sorts of online commerce you don't engage in due to
the risk of scams. Is that also unjust, due to the fact that your attempts to
avoid a scam might deprive some legitimate people of your business?

~~~
barrkel
That's a distinctly different question, for several reasons.

(1) Concentration of power: there's a qualitative difference between a large
organization making an absolute and sustained decision on a corporate basis,
and many distributed small organizations or individuals making ad-hoc iterated
decisions on a case by case basis. Normal statistical variation means that in
all likelihood, the market will simply be smaller, not all but extinguished.

(2) Your guess may be incorrect: I find it difficult to recollect an attempted
online commercial transaction that I aborted owing to fear of a scam. Now, if
you knew my personal circumstances, perhaps you'd be able to direct my
attention to such cases; in lieu of that, can you be more specific in your
guess, and at least give me a few examples? A few points on my behaviour: it's
my personal policy never to buy anything in direct response to any
advertisement or inducement, whether in person, over the phone, via email, or
online, if I do not have a prior independent _non-commercial_ relationship
with that entity. I will pay more for a service or product that I have found
myself rather than accept a similar service or product for a lower price if
that service or product was directly advertised to me; I infer that the extra
expenses in reaching me directly will be more than recouped via means that are
not immediately obvious to me, such that the savings are probably illusory.
Any time I have ever engaged in online commerce, it directly or indirectly
started out with a Google search for the product or product category in
question, or for a store name found either in a previous search, by
recommendation, or an online version of a brick-and-mortar store.

(3) Freedom of action and the rewards to that action: most Nigerians in
Nigeria have little scope for changing their situation to evade these
policies; from the original position, I would not like to be in their
situation. In converse, the problem of not being able to find customers is
distinctly different: one may choose to sell something else, to a different
market, and via a different medium. One of the risks of creating a business is
that there may not be a viable market, but one of the rewards is profit when
the market is viable. The risk / reward correspondence with consumers doesn't
seem convincing: at best, the consumer can obtain what they wanted at a fair
price; the upside is very limited.

------
dangrossman
This is a problem that will be fixed only when payment fraud in the country
decreases. That'll happen in part simply by increasing the number of people
online and making purchases. There are several countries my websites won't
allow payments from, but Nigeria isn't currently on that list because it's not
been a problem country for me in recent years. I'm sure other retailers are
acting on real data too and would stop blocking Nigeria if they could.

~~~
markessien
If paypal blocks Nigeria now...how will they ever know that payment fraud from
Nigeria is decreasing?

~~~
varjag
PayPal isn't in this business to do justice. Nigeria's market size to risk
factor is extremely bad, and perception of it generally is not improving.
There is no point for them to absorbing the risk.

Any given day I can dive into my spam folder and see at least a dozen of
Nigerian scam offers, perhaps that explains the general perception. While on
the dawn of the Web there was a number of places deemed to be sources of fraud
(e.g. much of Eastern Europe), most of them got a grip on electronic crime,
and their reputations improved. It's long overdue for Nigeria to get their act
together.

~~~
microarchitect
> It's long overdue for Nigeria to get their act together.

What do you mean by get their act together? In my experience living in a third
world country, it's hard enough to get the establishment to prosecute violent
crimes. So I'd say as an ordinary citizen it's pretty much impossible to get
anyone who matters to take electronic crime seriously.

------
markessien
Actually, there is a lot of talk of the problems, and little talk about
solutions. I have a potential solution:

Local whitelisting companies. Paypal and all other payment providers partner
with local companies who claim that will pre-screen people who want to use
paypal. These companies then use whatever methods they want (visiting the
homes, checking bank accounts, escrow) to verify that the people will be valid
paypal customers.

Paypal then does not need to verify thousands of people, it just needs to
trust this company, and if the company fails a few times, it's replaced and
pays some kind of penalty.

Also, amounts can be limited to some value that the verification company holds
in escrow for paypal. Something that moves the burden of verification to
people who are aware of how things work locally.

------
wybo
Maybe this is not a very popular response, but am I alone in thinking that the
collective responsibility for this rests, to some extent at least, indeed with
all Nigerians?

In that as citizens they should support politicians that take 419/spam/fraud
issues seriously?

Were there no collective responsibility, then all arguments of the kind that
the West owes/owed something to Africa for its colonial misdeeds, would even
be less valid (as hardly anyone involved with that is around any more...).

(and just to clarify, I do think the West owes something to Africa, but
collective responsibility can't go one way only. Being responsible, and
building a reputation for it, is as important for nations as it is for
businesses, teams and individual employees)

~~~
markessien
Just like collective responsibility for the Iraq and Afganistan wars rests
with all Americans?

~~~
wybo
Indeed, orthogonal to the extent to which those wars are bad on overall (and
the collective responsibility of the Dutch and Brits for slave trade in the
past, which we can all agree on, was a shame... (am Dutch, to take it
home...))

------
daleharvey
While on holiday in Morocco one of my domains got very close to expiring,
after trying for an hour or so to renew it I have a friend my details and they
logged in and done it immediately. for some reason didnt think of using a
proxy

I couldnt imagine how frustrating it would be for that to happen regularly

~~~
simonw
123reg.co.uk was inaccessible from both Morocco and Egypt when I travelled
there last year. I had to use a UK-based VPN to modify DNS records.

------
damoncali
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.

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

~~~
damoncali
I have no idea. But if I'm Paypal, I do what's in my best interest, and that
doesn't include helping out the people of Nigeria. That's up to the Nigerians.

------
dogcoffee
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.

------
kazey
I believe if anybody feels Nigerians deserve a chance, they should start an
online payment insurance company, to cover for the risk exposure :), so the
likes of paypal etc can buy the insurance and everybody is happy.

You can then develop an API (that does the verifications and flags orders)etc
for merchants to use together with the payment gateways to be covered by the
policy.

------
pointillistic
Are these famous "get money from your dead uncle in Nigeria", are the spamers
really from Nigeria? Or is it operated from some basement in Brooklyn?

~~~
gyardley
They're really from Nigeria (and other countries in Africa, but primarily
Nigeria). They're known as '419 scams' there, after the section of the
Nigerian criminal code that deals with advance-fee fraud.

This sort of fraud isn't something everyone does, but everyone's aware of it -
it's certainly a part of popular culture. For example, see the song 'I Go Chop
Your Dollar', performed by a popular Nigerian actor:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1nKR3gYRY8>

------
piramida
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 coming from this countries,
since if you are already treated as a thief, why not just be one? :)

~~~
jacquesm
> 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 crime
you did not commit, not being allowed to do business in the way that you
prefer is not a punishment, it's an inconvenience, even if it is a substantial
one.

'blame the merchant' seems to be the approach taken by most companies that are
in the payment chain, our payment processor actually blocks a whole slew of
countries and it might lose us the occasional sale but at least we get to stay
in business.

~~~
piramida
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.

------
noverloop
start a corporate shell in the UK? (or some other cheap place)

~~~
mahmud
Why does he need to jump through hoops that others don't? Oh yes, because he
is a 2nd-class netizen, the whole premise of his essay!

------
imprintcool
Does anything on this page look remotely Nigerian to you. #racistfaces

[http://www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-
Email...](http://www.perimetec.com/7-Things-You-Didnt-Know-About-Email-Spam-
Worldwide.php)

