Tell HN: OpenAI's services are not available in 45 countries
I was surprised to see ChatGPT unavailable in my country (Algeria) but available in neighboring countries (Morocco and Tunisia), so I created a script to test all countries.
Map: https://i.imgur.com/2fF3Xlh.png
Countries list: "Afghanistan", "Albania", "Algeria", "Andorra", "Angola", "Azerbaijan", "Bahrain", "Belarus", "Burundi", "Cambodia", "Cameroon", "Central African Republic", "Chad", "China", "Congo, Democratic Republic", "Cuba", "Egypt", "Equatorial Guinea", "Eritrea", "Ethiopia", "French Southern Territories", "Heard Island & Mcdonald Islands", "Hong Kong", "Iran, Islamic Republic Of", "Lao People's Democratic Republic", "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya", "Macao", "Mauritius", "North Korea", "Paraguay", "Russian Federation", "Saudi Arabia", "Somalia", "South Sudan", "Sudan", "Swaziland", "Syrian Arab Republic", "Tajikistan", "Turkmenistan", "Ukraine", "Uzbekistan", "Venezuela", "Viet Nam", "Yemen", "Zimbabwe"
User script: https://pastebin.com/c92Y01gL
Had never heard of Heard Island before and that sent me down a rabbit-hole into the world of obscure ccTLDs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.hm
https://www.theregister.com/2019/02/06/hm_domains_borked/
I live in Paraguay, and don't get why we are banned. We are a democracy. I know people from those banned countries that live in allowed countries are using the chat every day, so what was the point of ban them?
It definitely violates impartiality and is a typical case of discrimination.
are these countries banned or are just the servers aren't available in them? somebody explain !
You need a phone number to signup, and phone numbers from these countries are explicitly not allowed
What is this? What did us do wrong that make us not available to such innovation?
I think the map correlates with authoritarian regimes maps
Anyone knows why those countries? Some of them makes sense but others not at all.
Really wanted to be available in algeria. hadja ma teslah fel blad hadi
but there are some Algerians that have used it when it was first launched !! ma ykonch za3ma problem "andhom f el servers ?
They use VPN ig
It's shame really. Lots of untapped potential in some of these places.
guys how do I use the AI, because I'm in one of the unavailable countries and cannot access it. thanks
Hey tell me to do something crazy
Chad