Banned for Iranian People
First of all, I appreciate your amazing work but, it's really ridiculous when you make a model open source and then you ban it for Iranian people. And this is in a situation that I myself announced I'm Iranian in the register section. While I could have chosen another country easily.
Guys, you should understand it, when you make a project open source, you should believe that all the people on the earth should have access to it.
Also, it is ridiculous because I even can easily tell my friend in another country to download and send me the model and its data. You are just wasting my time for 1 hour.
Thank you anyway :)
I think you'd have to take that issue up with the U.S. Government. It's not really huggingface or Facebooks decision. They have to follow the law. BTW, I spent 3 months in Tehran in 1974. I love the people, I did not like the Shah. Hopefully one day all this ridiculous aggression and conflict will end and the whole world can become open sourced again. Sanctions Regulations (ITSR) (31 CFR Part 560). Sorry dude.
Thank you for your reply. I hope so.
Anyway, I registered using another account of mine and another country :)
You should probably delete that response.
No way dude :))
The worst case is that they would delete my account or registration. So what? I would join with another account :))
Or even I'll have access to the source from other websites. It's not a big deal. As long as the model is opened source, everybody can reach to it.
The difference is some challenges that we should face to. And Iranian people have become strong at this because of these many years of sanctions.
And my point is that when we can reach to it so easily, it's ridiculous that they put registration, and forbid us based on our honesty, while we can lie simply and have access to it.
So, - no judgement - are you a supporter of the current Iranian government? Just curious.
Absolutely not.
We are stuck here with a dictatorial government, and no government in the world cares about us :))
I know it seems like you're alone, but there are plenty of people here in the U.S. that applaud your efforts to free yourself from those shackles. Sadly we maybe facing similar circumstances come November. There is very little average people can do to affect the way their governments works other than vote and protest, but sometimes even those actions can produce negative consequence. I feel like we should all just sit back and learn to share, learn to tolerate different life styles, cultures and religious practices and not constantly struggle for power and wealth micro and macro. But hey, that's the human condition isn't it. We can only hope that it doesn't need to be.
Thank you dear Richard.
I'm grateful of your sympathy.
BTW, don't worry, we are here alive. despite we are some people who are living in an under-develop country with this kind of government system, we have activities in state-of-the-art sciences. And that's satisfying. I think someday these governments may realize that there is no need to hate each other.
I empathize with your situation.It is so disappointing that we are two people from two different countries trapped in two different dictatorships.
@rkapuaala Thank you for your sympathy. I appreciate it, but I don’t see any rule that prohibits the use of open models for Iranians! It sounds like Meta doesn’t want Iranians to use the model. By the way, during the early days after Mahsa Amini’s death, WhatsApp stopped working for Iranian phone numbers, even for users trying to connect from outside Iran. I’m still wondering who banned Iranians from using WhatsApp during such critical moments. WhatsApp was the only messenger not filtered by the Iranian government by that time.
If the restriction is being applied to protect the model from being used by terrorists, it’s important to consider the broader context. The Iranian Cyber Army is a large group of hackers and troll farms who work for the government.
It is listed in this document:https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2022-title50/pdf/USCODE-2022-title50-chap58-sec4801.pdf
It defines the use of the word, "item" to mean any technology or software. Sorry, but it does not appear to be Meta techs making the call but Meta legal. Sad that we are in these modern times, battling it out like we are still fighting the crusades.
As far as Armies of trolls and hackers, every country has them now. I keep telling my son and other AR15 adoring knucklehead I come in contact with, the next war won't be won with rifle or cannon, it will be won by hackers and trolls. Best buy a hunting rifle because this whole world is so invested in digitizing every aspect of their lives that a simple bug in the software can bring all nations to their knees, a technological apocolypse that makes the crowd strike disaster feel like a burp is the next great war and it will toss us all back to bronze age living. Save your bullets to put food on the table.
You can thank your government:
"Iranian group used ChatGPT to try to influence US election, OpenAI says"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/aug/16/open-ai-chatgpt-iran