Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 300 posts

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#151

Post by CodeWriter23 »

JonathanBeuys wrote: post #30

I don't get it. We keep seeing these dystopian stories again and again and again. Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? Or will we all live in fear of losing a lot of work and valuable connections by being banned from one of our social accounts? I already lost one Instagram account that I put a lot of work into. One day, Insta suddenly asked for my birthday. After me putting it in, all I saw is "Sorry, this…

> “But what if you lose your private key?

Answer: then you have lost access due to circumstances completely within your control. Contrast that with the amount of control you have over losing your account with a social company. IOW, that’s a total bullshit argument.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#152

Post by falcolas »

anoonmoose wrote: post #106
temp_account_32 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They pretty much are de facto public services. The town square is now digital, and the laws have failed to adapt. Just because some big corporation owns it doesn't make it different in practice. Do you really want to defend a future where you can be banned from doing anything because some random $BIGCORP's algorithm decides so on a whim?

Yes, I want that future, because their right to restrict service is the same right to restrict service that I personally have, and diminishing their rights diminishes my rights. If you want government-run services that act as public versions of these services, advocate for that. But I don't support this particular method of socializing private businesses.

You can keep a private/public company as a company while still restricting some of its activities via laws. This is reality for every company in existence.

There's even precedence when a private company is a de-facto public space (and must follow the governments' mandates on public spaces) in the physical world; extending this to the digital world makes sense.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#153

Post by TuringNYC »

moss2 wrote: post #44
JonathanBeuys wrote: post #30

I don't get it. We keep seeing these dystopian stories again and again and again. Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? Or will we all live in fear of losing a lot of work and valuable connections by being banned from one of our social accounts? I already lost one Instagram account that I put a lot of work into. One day, Insta suddenly asked for my birthday. After me putting it in, all I saw is "Sorry, this…

Another idea would be legislature. Have these online public spaces serve under the same laws as real-life public spaces (museums, parks et cetera). If a town banned you from the train station because you refuse to give them your phone number, that would open them up to being sued. That should absolutely apply to Discord, Google Mail and Amazon AWS.

>> If a town banned you from the train station because you refuse to give them your phone number, that would open them up to being sued.

Nice example you gave, because this literally happened between 2002 and 2015: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_Fly_List The No Fly List eventually swelled to close to a million people. There was no one entity you could sue, because airlines had their own algorithms for matching, so even if you werent on the list, but the algo fuzzy-matched you, you were effectively on the list. Matching names is notoriously bad. There was an ACLU lawsuit, but it was a much bigger effort than anything being described on this thread.

In summary: lawsuits against Government systems are slow and not necessarily something to aspire to as a better system.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#154

Post by rjmunro »

senko wrote: post #112

We really need a platform that would run open source for you as a service. In many cases there are reasonable OSS alternatives (here, Discord itself!) but not everyone wants to be a part-time sysadmin. Free/Libre Open-Source Software as a Service, anyone?

There are loads, but they have to ban people too.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#155

Post by ncmncm »

abduhl wrote: post #133
somenameforme wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private vs public all comes down to the interests of society, it's not religious dogma. Prior to the 60s it was perfectly legal to refuse to serve somebody because of their race or religion. The courts decided this was not in the public interest, and so that changed. Some time before that it was private companies used to also be able to fire anybody seeking to unionize. Then that changed. There is even precedent wher…

Small point: the courts didn’t decide this in the 1960s, the legislature did with the Civil Rights Act. The courts enforced it. The courts don’t (shouldn’t) determine what is in the public’s interest, the legislature (aka the people) does.

Sometimes do, sometimes don't.

It all depends on politics. Some people have opinions on how much court "activism" should be allowed, but they reliably flip the script when one of their pet topics shows up.

People used to insist Antonin Scalia was a sort of "strict constructionist", himself among them. But the moment he got a case where he had a personal opinion that contradicted his "strict" claims, his true colors came out. Then it turned out his strictness really did just mean corporations always win and individuals always lose, as his record had always suggested and his critics had long asserted.

(Never guessed I would have cause to miss him... He was not, anyway, Bork.)

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#156

Post by MikePlacid »

pjc50 wrote: post #117
JonathanBeuys wrote: post #30

I don't get it. We keep seeing these dystopian stories again and again and again. Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? Or will we all live in fear of losing a lot of work and valuable connections by being banned from one of our social accounts? I already lost one Instagram account that I put a lot of work into. One day, Insta suddenly asked for my birthday. After me putting it in, all I saw is "Sorry, this…

Unfortunately as we've seen from email, if there's no system for silencing posters you get drowned in spam. The history evolved as follows, and this is how I'd expect it to go for any "decentralized" comms system: - various private blocklists pop up identifying alleged spammers. These have a false positive rate, but they're useful enough to become popular - deliverability starts to become an issue; some people can't…

If the filter is in every participant’s individual hands, then:

1. if a person I am interesting in delivery to blocks me by mistake - I have an option to ask him to unblock me by other communication means.

2. if my opponent in a public discussion blocks me, other people can still see my arguments.

Both these benefits are absent in a centralized blocking system, no? And I do not see any drawbacks, are there some?

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#157

Post by wbsss4412 »

pjc50 wrote: post #117
JonathanBeuys wrote: post #30

I don't get it. We keep seeing these dystopian stories again and again and again. Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? Or will we all live in fear of losing a lot of work and valuable connections by being banned from one of our social accounts? I already lost one Instagram account that I put a lot of work into. One day, Insta suddenly asked for my birthday. After me putting it in, all I saw is "Sorry, this…

Unfortunately as we've seen from email, if there's no system for silencing posters you get drowned in spam. The history evolved as follows, and this is how I'd expect it to go for any "decentralized" comms system: - various private blocklists pop up identifying alleged spammers. These have a false positive rate, but they're useful enough to become popular - deliverability starts to become an issue; some people can't…

Email is a different beast though, as it is set up to replicate snail mail. You need to be able to receive mail from anyone at any time.

For private, personal use at least, you don’t need this for a service that competes with discord. I’m not allowing random strangers into my chats, having an allowlist basically makes spam a non issue.

Now, that doesn’t fix the problem for public channels, but spam/trolling is always an issue on those anyways, and frankly, I don’t understand how people can use discord for that purpose in the first place.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#158

Post by ehutch79 »

horsawlarway wrote: post #140
qzx_pierri wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet is not real life. It seems a lot of people who hold your opinion are in the 18-24 age range. Those people who grew up thinking the internet is the only way to communicate or “make things happen”. But I assure you these private companies do NOT have to let you use their services, and common excuses such as “Online communication is like a public square!” is not rooted in the desire for free speech, but is…

I'm 33. I think you're wrong. I suspect you're older - imagine the US without a public highway system. Imagine every highway is private. Imagine what arbitrary bans from those highways would do to impact how you live. Talk to me about how well we should communicate face to face in that situation? Idea not that appealing? That's what you're advocating for today. A complete loss of a highway system that has no public r…

A private company didn't 'build' the highways. (yes i'm sure a private company laid the asphalt, but at the direction of the government)

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#159

Post by dannyw »

cloudwalk9 wrote: post #28

Discord Trust and Safety in particular is downright useless. I feel I should share my story. It's a personal hell I've been stuck in for a while. I'm disabled from severe depression resistant to first line treatments, bedridden a lot of the time, and I rely on the platform for most of my social interaction and resources for my hobbies, as far as I can pursue them of course. Discord is invaluable and is basically a mo…

There's no foolproof way for them to ban you; something is leaking. Do you know any technical friends why may be able to test ideas?

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#160

Post by giraffe_lady »

rglullis wrote: post #144
giraffe_lady wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something I also share with the younger generation is the understanding that the cowardice of their elders is what got us all in this situation to start with. "Self-sovereignty" and individualism are failed ideologies: we will solve this for all of us or for none of us. A large contingent of ""hackers"" throws up their hands and say "fine none of us then as long as I can insulate myself from the worse effects of it"…

You are putting "individualism" where none was mentioned. > "fine none of us then as long as I can insulate myself from the worse effects of it". No. More like "there is no way that any central entity will be able to solve the conflicts of everyone without turning into authoritarianism and tyranny, so let's stop pretending that we can do that and create a plethora of different communities where people are closer to t…

So... based on the fear of a particular outcome, you want a situation where individuals and small groups must solve the problem for themselves or accept the consequences?

The language may be uncharitable but I remain comfortable calling that cowardice and user-blaming, yes. I stand where I stand on this.

Post reply on HN