Earlier quoted context omitted.
A burner account, used just to announce a new platform?
Oh, nah. I created that server in August 2020.
I am suggesting making on a new, less volatile platform, and announcing via a burner Discord account.
Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
221–230 of 300 posts
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#222Earlier quoted context omitted.
You gotta stop putting all of your eggs in one basket. Also, connect with these important people outside of Discord. You have to assume these sites/services will ban you at any moment. Contingency planning isn’t just for projects at work!
> You gotta stop putting all of your eggs in one basket. This isn't free or even possible for a lot of people. I think it would be better for society for this cost to be imposed on the Discords/Metas/Googles of the world, than for it to be imposed on their users.
Voting with legs isn't painless, but is the right thing to do.
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#223Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not your server, not your data. Host your own mission critical services, and don’t commit too much to (especially free) third party services.
You cannot self-host identity. You cannot self-host a social graph. If people would host "abc liked my tweet" and "xyz follows me" on their own server, then everybody would claim that Billie Eilish liked all their tweets and Joe Biden is their best friend. People go on social media for the social graph. You can do that via a central authority (and live in fear that everything is taken from you) or you can do it via c…
>then everybody would claim that Billie Eilish liked all their tweets and Joe Biden is their best friend
Twitter bots already do that.
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#224I 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…
> Feels very 1984.
I'd say Kafka. On the bright side, so far no one has woken up and googled himself and seen page after pages of cockroach pictures, not yet at least.
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#225Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 believ…
Good luck trying to convince an resource-strapped nonprofit to implement contingency plan for this.
No government regulation means existence of these will for all practical purposes depend on Google's whim. I don't see any other viable option, you do? can you elaborate?
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> I suspect you're older No, I'm younger than you. > 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 First off, this is a flawed argument because my taxes don't pay for the servers running Discord or other similar services. Also, your response is proving my point. I said in…
You keep assuming that "private" means they are not accountable to the general public, and that they are (fantastically) standing alone without leaning on the resources that all of us are providing.
And that's simply a complete mistruth (I'd call it delusional - in the case of tech companies). They might be private companies, but they cannot (literally - full stop, without room for debate) exist without the infrastructure that we are providing them.
From the roads that they use to provision their datacenters with equipment, to the power we generate with power plants under government supervision, to the police/lawyers/judges that ensure their property rights, to the firefighters who deal with their emergencies. To the cable companies that we subsidize to provide them internet, and connect them to their customers. To the trash we collect from them, the water we provide, the clean air their employees breath.
I don't understand how you keep missing this point. "Private" does not mean self-sufficient, and it is an insufficient standard to claim that being "private" means you have carte-blanch control of how you operate.
This is why we have regulations over all sorts of industries. Do you think private companies are free to ignore accessibility laws? Or that they can violate discrimination laws? Or that they enter into any contract, regardless of the clauses?
Basically - "Ownership" is only a concept that exists BECAUSE we enforce it. There is no such thing as "ownership" without the participation of all of us in this make believe game.
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So in this case - it's complicated. I think in general I don't mind private companies being allowed to remove users from their platforms, but I think it matters quite a bit what sort of impact that has on the user, and what sort of actions provoked that removal.
Should a store be allowed to remove a jewish person because they are jewish? Nope - damn well shouldn't.
Should a store be allowed to remove a jewish person who is breaking shit and making a mess? Sure.
Should discord be able to ban malicious users spamming other customers? Sure
Should discord be able to ban a user because they changed email addresses? Probably not.
Intent and actions of both parties MATTER.
And simply claiming that it's "Cost efficient" to not deal with problems that are trivial to a company, but utterly life changing to an individual (such as loss to a primary communication channel) is not acceptable. It's cost efficient for the company, and debilitating to the individual - they are harmed immensely so the company can save pennies.
We've long had established law around unequal bargaining power (it's where roughly all of our labor laws come from...) and it's been a concept for literal centuries.
So I'm inclined to say this on the matter:
Just because they currently "can" remove a user for this, doesn't mean that - ethically - we should allow that practice to continue.
It just means our laws are woefully out of date for this application, and technological progress is outpacing political progress.
Edit: Basically - I'm claiming complete and utter rubbish on this
> First off, this is a flawed argument because my taxes don't pay for the servers running Discord or other similar services.
Our taxes DAMN WELL DO pay for discord to be able to run their servers. We pay with our taxes, our time, sometimes our lives - so that the environment in which discord runs their servers can exist at all. Just because discord happen to be paying the costs for the servers themselves is almost immaterial. Society is an organism. We are all part of a whole.
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
How would it work? I mean, I can imagine framing me for a felony and getting me banned from internet access as part of my sentence, but are there less extreme procedures? EDIT: Maybe breaking into my email server and sending out spam to poison my IP. That’s conceivable, and would partially ban me from sending out email.
DDOS, reporting your server/domain for TOS violations, etc. As long as nobody cares enough to do it, it probably won’t happen. Just never piss off the wrong person.
That said, how much costs ddos?
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#228Earlier quoted context omitted.
Users keep using. Why would the companies change? If you object, don't click "I agree" to terms of service that you don't feel comfortable with. It's like a prisoner's dilemma. You can complain about how people always defect on you, but you're doing the exact same thing.
>If you object, don't click "I agree" to terms of service that you don't feel comfortable with. Meanwhile everyone you know clicks "I agree" and you are now excluded from communicating with them. What did this accomplish?
Well, it prevents you from communicating with the sort of people who will blithely participate in these sorts of destructive systems.
More seriously, it's like an act of civil disobedience. If everybody acted similarly, we would not have these problems. Most people won't wise up until their kin are personally harmed by one of these massive unaccountable institutions, and until that happens to enough people, you have to recognize that acting in accordance with your principles will not always be the most convenient path through life.
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#229Earlier quoted context omitted.
Discord, no (at least for now - some government contractor adding self-help via Discord or Slack is not hard to imagine). Your gmail account? Yes, it would prevent you from using the DMV's website.
No, I don't use an @gmail.com address for important communications. If Google banned me I would still be able to communicate with the government on the internet. It turns out there's more email providers than just gmail.
I feel like the goalposts of this thread have moved. We've gone from "no, you don't need the internet in your life" to "just don't use certain private entities on the internet".
Which I am going to interpret as "yes, you do need the internet to live your life, and you also have to be either savvy or unremarkable to keep from getting stomped on by private entities."
Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I suspect you're older No, I'm younger than you. > 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 First off, this is a flawed argument because my taxes don't pay for the servers running Discord or other similar services. Also, your response is proving my point. I said in…
You keep assuming that "private" means they are not accountable to the general public, and that they are (fantastically) standing alone without leaning on the resources that all of us are providing. And that's simply a complete mistruth (I'd call it delusional - in the case of tech companies). They might be private companies, but they cannot (literally - full stop, without room for debate) exist without the infrastru…
There are so many flaws in this response. I don't even know where to begin. But I respect your opinion. I'll leave it at that.