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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

#91

Post by LanceH »

macspoofing wrote: post #89
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…

>We keep seeing these dystopian stories again and again and again. Does anybody really believe it will ever stop? I don't think it can. The problem is that these companies are trying to solve the problem of highly sophisticated attackers, at scale. >I could sleep way better if I knew that two have to mess up for me to lose my digital life. Me and the platform. You're trying to solve a cultural, legal, and regulatory…

> I don't think it can.

A nominal payment for the purpose of verification could allow someone to "prove" ownership of a number/email/identity.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#92

Post by coldtea »

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…

>Feels very 1984.

More like "Brazil". In 1984 at least things wasn't also commercialized, and shit worked.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#93

Post by qzx_pierri »

ruined wrote: post #84
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…

the internet is, unfortunately, real life

I acknowledge your feeling that the internet is real life, and I respect your opinion, but I have to disagree. I'll repost part of a comment I made 5 months ago because I think it's very relevant:

"Don't forget that everything you see online is a facade. 15+ years ago, I fell in love with the internet because it's somewhere I could go to be something that I'm not. I could be LOUD, or I could say things I would normally never say away from the keyboard, and I think everyone bonded together online with this fact in mind. The internet was an escape.

Soon, people began to view the internet as a reality due to the rapid homogenization into 3-4 major websites which are controlled mostly by advertisers. But what I've noticed is that most of the opinions you read online aren't very honest.

Commenters on reddit will grift in the comment section for upvotes. Some commenters on HN will purposely avoid certain topics because their account is tied to their reputation in certain very partisan circles in California. Both of these examples are often the loudest and MOST SEEN (or unseen...) replies due to the low effort alignment with the popular opinion at the time.

Although the internet seems more real everyday, I truly believe it's never been further from reality. No one is truly able to say what they want due to the (seemingly) dire consequences of saying "F*ck it" and stating your true opinion (which isn't all the time, but the option no longer exists). And this even applies in the short term. If you aren't banned, you're downvoted (HN, reddit, Lobste.rs, every website with a comment section...) or filtered by an algorithm tuned to keep corporate sponsors and advertisers happy (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube)."

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#94

Post by coldtea »

anoonmoose wrote: post #51
moss2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That should absolutely not apply to Discord, Google Mail, or Amazon AWS, because those are all private companies restricting the use of their private property. You may call them "public spaces" or "public services" but that is an abuse of the word "public".

>That should absolutely not apply to Discord, Google Mail, or Amazon AWS, because those are all private companies restricting the use of their private property.

That's not some law of physics. Just a man made law that game them those "use of their private proverty" rights (or rather, rich and powerful people lobbied and bought legislation, and got them for themselves).

We can take them back. And we can also stop treating them as legal "persons" while we're at it.

>You may call them "public spaces" or "public services" but that is an abuse of the word "public".

Public in the legal sense is just what we deem public in the legal sense.

As for public in the dictionary sense, that's irrelevant here.

Besides, after offering a service used by millions, that's basically a public service (I mean in the dictionary sense: directed at a mass public) - and even legal scholars have argued that they function as a kind of public utility (and could/should be regulated as such).

If we're to take it even further, then it's also a historical fact that all countries, including the USA, have nationalized companies (made some private companies public the same way public libraries are, either entirely or in part - e.g. having the state be shareholders of large part of them). So it's not like it's some unprecedent thing.

https://thenextsystem.org/history-of-nationalization-in-the-....

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#95

Post by kouteiheika »

ropeladder wrote: post #15

I triggered some Discord flag where now they require me to give them my phone number to log in via the web. I won't give it to them. Luckily I have a still-logged-in instance on my home computer, do I can still use that for the time being. Super frustration though.

Same here. Still logged in through Firefox, but can't login through Chrome anymore. Exact same computer, exact same IP address. I contacted support and they refused to help me, quote:

> I just checked with my team, and upon review of your account, it appears that our detection system has triggered successfully and we will not be removing the phone verification requirement on your account. You'll be required to register a phone number to your Discord account in order to continue the use of it.

This is *after* I explained that I'm still logged in and can fully use Discord in another browser without registering a phone number.

I tried to also get an answer as to whether I'll be locked out of my account if I log out of my account in Firefox, but they didn't tell me.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#96

Post by macspoofing »

anoonmoose wrote: post #51
moss2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That should absolutely not apply to Discord, Google Mail, or Amazon AWS, because those are all private companies restricting the use of their private property. You may call them "public spaces" or "public services" but that is an abuse of the word "public".

>That should absolutely not apply to Discord, Google Mail, or Amazon AWS, because those are all private companies restricting the use of their private property.

We don't live in a libertarian utopia where private property is not regulated. If you're a store-owner, for example, there are some things you simply cannot do or must allow. In California, for example, a private space, like a mall, has to allow constitutionally protected speech[1].

You can regulate platforms to allow for, say, free speech rights.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pruneyard_Shopping_Center_v._R...

"under the California Constitution, individuals may peacefully exercise their right to free speech in parts of private shopping centers regularly held open to the public, subject to reasonable regulations adopted by the shopping centers"

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#97

Post by superkuh »

Stop depending entirely on corporate systems for your personal communication and recreation (I say on HN...).

And absolutely stop calling for the use of violence (regulations by government) in these situations. Just because Bob says you cannot come over to the weekly neighborhood BBQs in his backyard does not mean it is ethical for you to call up your police friend to threaten Bob and to make sure you can go. It doesn't matter if you're right and he's wrong. It doesn't matter if everyone in the neighborhood continues to chose to go to his BBQs and you can't. It's still Bob's backyard and he isn't inititing violence against you. Don't do it to him.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#98

Post by hrbf »

It fascinates me to no end.

On the one hand many people more or less voluntarily use private companies’ free services and are surprised when they are shut out for arbitrary reasons. On the other, regulation is decried as government overreach.

Then there are the inevitable technologist voices calling for yet another technical solution for an issue created by technology and economic liberalism in the first place.

This is a social and legal issue, not a technical one.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#99

Post by unethical_ban »

mavhc wrote: post #75
haunter wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The popularity of Discord always surprises me! It takes hard work and time to create an active community Free dedicated voice chat with rich text chat. It was meant to take on Teamspeak, Ventrilo, Mumble etc. And it successfully did. >or IRC if you're savvy Totally different use case, not even comparable

Typing to people you don't really know on the internet? Seems the same use case

Instantaneous creation of a server with an RBAC GUI, multiple text and voice chat rooms, voice chat, screen share, app share(game streaming), and for clients, a GUI that allows people to view the status of other servers while participating in one.

Again, it's made for voice/screen/streaming share, not primarily text.

Re: Ask HN: Discord banned me with no recourse

#100

Post by teeray »

anoonmoose wrote: post #51
moss2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That should absolutely not apply to Discord, Google Mail, or Amazon AWS, because those are all private companies restricting the use of their private property. You may call them "public spaces" or "public services" but that is an abuse of the word "public".

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.
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