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Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

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Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#181

Post by chmod775 »

I did the same thing (also wanting to create a work account) with a similar result. Luckily it was the new account that got banned instead of the old one.

I hadn't added the phone number to my old account and when I later wanted to do so I was informed it could only be assigned to one.

So I removed the number from the new account, which immediately got banned, and then added it to my old account without a problem.

Something about "new account without phone" discord seems to dislike.

My old account also had some money spent with them, which possibly saved it.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#182

Post by qzx_pierri »

conradfr wrote: post #125
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…

Losing my gmail account would have way more effect on my "real life" than if I had suddenly no letter box. Why can't it be regulated? Phone is and it's provided by private companies. The law even allows me to port my number between them.

> Losing my gmail account would have way more effect on my "real life" than if I had suddenly no letter box

Yes, due to your own lack of contingency planning.

I respect your intentions, but government regulation is not always the answer. At some point, we have to admit that we are far too reliant on these services (that many luddites refuse to use, and live a normal life).

My second sentence is true as of now, but maybe things could change in the future. However, I only base my arguments on present circumstances.

I do agree that some of these companies need to at least offer some sort of human support team or call center available to serve users that were falsely banned or randomly booted. However, forcing the hand of these companies is not only unfair, but pretty entitled.

Gmail is a free service.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#183

Post by qzx_pierri »

sriram_malhar wrote: post #180
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…

No, it isn't always about social media, or free speech, or 18-24 year olds. An NGO I consult for runs its entire business on Google. All its documents are on Google docs, all digital assets on google drive, using google play store for their mobile app, using firebase on the backend .... They work on children's education, and have lots of photos of children attending their workshops. My biggest fear is that Google AI…

> An NGO I consult for runs its entire business on Google. All its documents are on Google docs, all digital assets on google drive, using google play store for their mobile app, using firebase on the backend

Sounds like an egregious lack of contingency planning. This situation is the fault of the engineer who stood up their infra. Your argument wouldn't exist if there were a Plan B and Plan C in place.

Do you believe it's fair that your client's lack of preparation is somehow grounds for overreaching government regulation?

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#184

Post by cloudwalk9 »

ridgered4 wrote: post #174
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…

> A few days ago I made three accounts to try to test ways to get them off my back. One was made on a virtual machine on a VPS located a thousand miles away from me and had no connection to me. Although I did give vague hints to friends that it was me. They banned all three accounts, even the VM one. I had a nervous breakdown knowing I may never be able to participate on the platform again. I also felt like I was bei…

Well, I was very vague but still identified myself to a few friends in a trusted server using subtle cues like the cloud emoji. This was a mistake in hindsight because I'm sure they could put two and two together, but it also made me realize how dedicated they are to keeping me away that they're now watching the server I join for any sign of me.

There should have been no other link to me, no fingerprint. This was an environment that has never touched Discord.

As of now I set up a new account that is less-than-discreet, obviously me if they're paying attention, and another account that is very discreet, on a VPN. I'm testing to see if an Android work profile is leaking anything. If both accounts get disabled, then it's back to the drawing board. If the not-so-discreet account gets disabled, the work profile is working and I'm on the right track. Although it sucks to have to abandon my friends and identity over this nonsense, just to stay hidden and be fearful of seeing that damn login screen again.

Hey, if neither get disabled in the next, say, month, maybe this Violet person was fired or they gave up. I can only assume it's them if they're the ones intercepting my appeals every time.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#185

Post by ncmncm »

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…

Slightly off topic, but the US FDA has just approved an analog of the miraculous ketamine depression treatment. Basically you can chug a 4oz /100 ml of dextromethorphan (US brand "Delsym") for the same effect, a couple of weeks' absolute relief via a poorly understood metabolic pathway. "If it works, it works."

I will be eager to hear about others' results. (No effect, + or -, for me, on a smaller dose. Do, always, start with a smaller dose, in case it works badly for you; and check warnings on drug interactions carefully.) Maybe ask your Dr.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#186

Post by bdw5204 »

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…

That's why there should be laws requiring large services to provide due process for users who have invested significant time and energy into the platform.

Its just common sense that a spam bot should be nuked on sight but a legitimate user should get a fair hearing before you ban them. Ideally the social media platforms would do something akin to Wikipedia's arbitration committee (basically the Supreme Court of Wikipedia) but scalable by hiring a suitably diverse pool of "unskilled" people for a $15 an hour or so remote job where they decide if a longtime legitimate user should be banned. I think this system would do a much better job of avoiding false positives. A properly functioning spam bot detector shouldn't be detecting any legitimate longtime users whatsoever.

Banning email addresses without sufficient notice to allow accounts tied to that email to be moved to another email should be illegal. You should also have a legal right to access your digital purchases even if your account is banned. There's nothing wrong with not wanting a customer any longer but you shouldn't be able to cause irreparable harm to your customer on their way out the door and there should be safeguards in place to ensure you don't fire any customers by mistake.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#187

Post by wang_li »

anoonmoose wrote: post #166
wang_li wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your argument was lost a hundred years ago or more. There are many regulations on businesses. On their speech, on their pricing, on the products, on hiring practices. The list is quite large. AT&T can't restrict who can use their network to make phone calls based on the political views or the content of the call. Why should Google, Facebook, or Twitter? Especially when special liability exemptions were made without w…

I mean the simple answer is that I think AT&T should be able to restrict their network based on those criteria. If the people of the US don't like that, they should vote to either build out equal infrastructure to replicate that functionality publicly, or vote to buy out AT&T's infrastructure.

Or we can cancel all their easements, remove their right to run fiber and copper over public lands, and not renew their radio spectrum leases. These networks exist because the public gave them privileges in order to build the networks. Without those privileges they wouldn't exist.

Plus we could make them civilly and criminally liable for every bit of fraud, defamation, child porn, copyright violation, and etc. that involves their network.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#188

Post by teeray »

anoonmoose wrote: post #111
teeray wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We don’t have the same standard in place for physical private companies. If Walmart started issuing lifetime bans to people because they didn’t fill out the customer survey on the receipt, they would be well within their rights by the same argument. It would also probably not be tolerated by society, because it impacts food security for those people where Walmart is the only grocery store around.

I am fine with Walmart issuing those bans, as is within their rights, because the correct mechanism to respond to that would be for it to be "not tolerated by society", aka, the market will respond.

> the market will respond

Maybe they roll a D20 if you don't fill out the survey and if you roll a 1, you're banned for life (what can I say, they make up the rules for bans). Would the almighty free market really build another grocery store for that 5% of banned people? No... they would go hungry.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#189

Post by ncmncm »

cloudwalk9 wrote: post #127
steanne wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you may be able to participate in servers that have bridges, like to irc or matrix. that's a minority, though.

As much as possible, I've done this, but then it's Discord server after server for every single new thing of interest. I'm a budding programmer and I maintain(ed) the DarkPlaces engine. In August 2020, I created a Discord server for it with LadyHavoc's blessing, creating a community that brought together professional developers making commercial games using the engine. ...only for me to not be able to participate unl…

A burner account, used just to announce a new platform?

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#190

Post by rthomas6 »

ncmncm wrote: post #185
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…

Slightly off topic, but the US FDA has just approved an analog of the miraculous ketamine depression treatment. Basically you can chug a 4oz /100 ml of dextromethorphan (US brand "Delsym") for the same effect, a couple of weeks' absolute relief via a poorly understood metabolic pathway. "If it works, it works." I will be eager to hear about others' results. (No effect, + or -, for me, on a smaller dose. Do, always ,…

Are you claiming drinking 4 oz of cough syrup cures depression for a few weeks? Do you have any studies I can read about this? I'm not being snarky, this is really interesting and something I have not heard before. Where are you getting that dosage from? How dangerous is it?
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