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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

#41

Post by bowsamic »

bruce343434 wrote: post #25
ctrlmeta wrote: post #14

The popularity of Discord always surprises me! It takes hard work and time to create an active community. Why put all that hard work and time into a corporate-controlled platform that can lock you out of it anytime they want? How do people feel ok taking such a big risk? Why not use an open protocol like Matrix (or IRC if you're savvy) to form your community?

They really, honestly, don't think it would happen to them. It's not a risk to them in their brains.

Well, statistically, it's probably not a significant enough probability to be a risk worth acting on

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#42

Post by vachina »

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…

Not your server, not your data.

Host your own mission critical services, and don’t commit too much to (especially free) third party services.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#43

Post by Crosseye_Jack »

ctrlmeta wrote: post #14

The popularity of Discord always surprises me! It takes hard work and time to create an active community. Why put all that hard work and time into a corporate-controlled platform that can lock you out of it anytime they want? How do people feel ok taking such a big risk? Why not use an open protocol like Matrix (or IRC if you're savvy) to form your community?

Most people want someone else to deal with the hassle. Most people don't want to run their own server(s), so even if people did use IRC or Matrix those people would host their community on servers that are controlled by others who could lock you out of it anytime they wanted.

> How do people feel ok taking such a big risk?

Well for most people they don't see the risks involved and those who are aware of the risks don't believe it will ever happen to them. Just look at Google accounts as an example. People use Gmail, get themselves locked out of them, and lose pretty much all their digital lives all the time but people still happily rely on Gmail.

Some quickly Googled stats about Gmail (take these number with a pinch of salt cause I've not looked into whats supporting these numbers - https://techjury.net/blog/gmail-statistics/ )

> Gmail remains the most popular email platform with over 1.8 billion users worldwide.

> As of April 2022, Gmail holds 29.5% of the email client market share.

> Gmail accounts for 27% of all email opens.

> 75% of all Gmail users access their email on mobile devices.

> 61% of 18-29-year-olds use Gmail.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#44

Post by moss2 »

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.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#45

Post by Sebb767 »

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…

For each unreasonably banned user, there are 5 concerned ones and 100 ones who joined the platform blue-eyed. It'll be hard for the few of us to fight the network effect.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#46

Post by quikoa »

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…

Perhaps it's worth to consider taking them to a small claims court. I don't know what the odds of winning are but it's quite the hassle for a company.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#47

Post by mdrzn »

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.

This feels like the only way to move forward.

I can't wait for EU to propose something similar to fix these kind of issues, or a minimum level of customer service per every thousand users.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#48

Post by onion2k »

vachina wrote: post #42
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…

Not your server, not your data. Host your own mission critical services, and don’t commit too much to (especially free) third party services.

In the case of the user who started this thread, there's no option to 'host it yourself'. They're trying to be part of the community that Discord hosts. Discord is stopping them. You can't just fire up an IRC server and ask everyone on the Discord to move because you can't join in. That's not how life works.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#49

Post by rglullis »

Bilal_io wrote: post #35
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…

> Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? I don't. Regulation is the key in my opinion. Not fully sure what policies need to be enacted, but at the very least prohibit automated bans except for very trivial cases that don't really need human review.

OP is arguing about us stop relying on over centralized corporations and to start using the tools (that already exist!) based on free software where such type of arbitrary rulings are impossible.

Your response is "mah regulation".

On Hacker News of all places, I'd expect that people were at least willing to take control of their lives and actions, and not to cry from oppressive authority to another, thinking that we can only choose the lesser of two evils.

Where has that spirit gone, really? Is it a generational thing?

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#50

Post by JonathanBeuys »

vachina wrote: post #42
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…

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 cryptographic proof. Self hosting is not a solution.

You also cannot host identity.

If your domain gets stolen from you (search for the horror stories on Google or HN search), your identity is gone. Nothing you can do against it, since you are at the mercy of authorities again: The registrars.

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