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by jzwinck 4438 days ago
This sort of logic will hurt you with customers who are US persons living overseas. I cannot tell you how annoying it is when as a US citizen and taxpayer I am blocked from using US services because I am not physically in the US. In 2014, where we plug our computers in does not define who we are. Geolocation is not authentication.
2 comments

Not even just that, but where they ignore your Accept-Language and just make up a decision on what language you should be using. Google has no way to fully switch languages - even after going to Google.com and setting English, you'll see images have tooltips in your "local" language.

Google's Play app does the same thing for a bit of their content. Certain headers get localized, despite everything else in the app being English. Netflix has the same problem, and then to further add insult, they send you to non-English phone numbers for support.

The most annoying thing is that someone probably got a raise for these "features".

That doesn't actually fix it. When you start searching, the alt text for the logo is still in the "local" language.
It is a trade off. You can purchase a cheap VPN service from thousands of VPN providers and get routed through a US IP. For you, who wants to fill the tax return it is worth it, for those who want to spam the sh*t out of other companies it is not worth it. I think this system works perfectly...