Ask Lemmy

Security still plays. If I'm offering a blog for instance or some FOSS software that isn't in Russian or about Russia and I'm getting frequent bad traffic from Russia, I'm probably going to geoblock Russia.

Security is very often the reason (other than legality or copyright) that web services employ geoblocking. While people can easily circumvent this via VPN or any number of other methods, this takes slightly more effort which helps improve the overall signal to noise ratio for web-traffic considerably. 

It's not about trying to stop those people from accessing that service per se, it's just a fact that there are a number of countries who don't have laws or don't enforce laws regarding tampering with foreign systems. While this may be the action of just a few people in any given country, the traffic can be from many thousands of different IP addresses which may only have a country of origin in common.

Attacks on FOSS software as a means of gaining illicit access to organizations using that product as part of their infrastructure are more and more common (search: supply chain attacks). People who are earnestly trying to use a website that they are being geoblocked from are sadly caught in the crossfire of a fight they have no part in, and probably don'tknow is happening. However, the people doing the geo blocking are generally not doing so out of malice, but out of necessity.

You expect everyone to just have a neutral opinion of every country and the majority views of its citizens?

I don’t care if an individual in Russia is ‘good’ because I have no way of verifying that so I block them from everything.

Chances are high that if my project/blog or whatever helps a Russian it’s someone who holds very different political beliefs so I would rather not.