The irony of trying to block content/visitors based on country, while publishing on a platform called the "World Wide" web. IP address blocks that roughly correspond with geographic regions is kind of a design flaw.

That's what happens when you have idealistic nerds implementing a vision of what they want , rather than the typical software that is designed and built almost like an representation of the organization that built it, i.e Conway's Law.

This comment sounds differently when you remember the Internet is from DARPA.

Is it a design or implementation flaw?

There's no irony. A given name does not constitute a mandate to use it any particular way.