Deleting the golang subreddit • Hacker News Board

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#321

Post by jamra » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:07 PM UTC

ufo wrote: post #306

water42 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have any proof of this? I haven't heard this before and they certainly have an active enough community to push things to the r/all quickly.

Their votes to comments ratio is much, much higher than other subreddits, which is very suspect. Another suspect thing is that time when the Reddit algorthm broke and the first 50 pages of r/all were turned into /r/the_donald post. Apparently what happened is that the sorting broke and they were ordering posts by activity, revealing that /r/the_donald posts were being upvoted at a rate that dwarfed other subreddits.

Similarly, the actual votes to polling results were also very skewed. It likely correlates.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#322

Post by dirtbox » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:16 PM UTC

Spez edits comments directed at him in a toxic community that has been pretty much the root of the alt-right echo chamber for the last year.

I'm just sad he didn't delete the entire sub.

/r/golang can do what they like, but this is no reason.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#323

Post by honksillet » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:17 PM UTC

rocketpastsix wrote: post #23

heroprotagonist wrote: post #18

So.. here's the thing. I think that spez did everyone a favor by editing those user comments. We know that politicians and corporations game the system already with fake accounts, presumably as a tool for manipulating public opinion. We know from the code that user comments aren't encrypted at all, or their voting tallies. It would require a very small tweak to manipulate things from the server side. Given that, user…

Not to mention, its pretty widely known that /r/the_donald uses bots to up the votes and push their stuff higher on /r/all. Not that Im thrilled that Spez did what he did, but /r/the_donald has been pushing the line ever since it was created.

Widely known by who? Source that statement.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#324

Post by j1vms » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:19 PM UTC

I know people are talking again about a distributed (blockchain-based?) forum preventing problems like this, and once that happens it will make "message forgery" like this a lot harder. But a "low-tech" solution in the mean time would be for users to post a public-key under their username/account. Then when they publish a message, they include a private-key encrypted SHA256 hash of the contents of their post and append that to their message (in effect, signing it). Other users' client-side tools (say browser plugins) could pick up the hash, verify the message and indicate the message is authentic. Forging the public key or an already posted message would raise an alert for automated tools, other users and/or the poster. Would reduce the need to log all message contents, just the keys. Of course, does not prevent message deletions but that is under moderation scope anyway. Just a sketch.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#325

Post by rurban » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:20 PM UTC

Aside from the valid point and the little drama involved, the more important point is that reddit just lost its safe harbor protection over that issue, which means it will be either closed down soon (too expensive and risky) or heavily censored with only a few subreddits, which means golang sooner or later might need to find another place. So better look now.

https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/801627024431271936

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#326

Post by ClassyJacket » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:28 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #45

mibbiting wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like some people don't understand the gravity of what he did. He edited someone elses comments. What is the point in being part of a community where the website owners may be editing random comments? It undermines the whole thing. Let me ask a question. If it turned out that Google had started selectively "editing" peoples email coming from Gmail, would you still be fine using Gmail?

There is no gravity. People are overreacting, that's all. Spez simply did what other sites are able to do but never admit if they do or not. GPG sign everything online if you're concerned about your data changing. Even HN could change your comments if they wanted. What's stopping people? "Trust"?

So what if other websites "could"? It only matters if they DO.

I don't treat everyone like a psychopath because they COULD stab me. I only care if they do.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#327

Post by rurban » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:31 PM UTC

rurban wrote: post #325

Aside from the valid point and the little drama involved, the more important point is that reddit just lost its safe harbor protection over that issue, which means it will be either closed down soon (too expensive and risky) or heavily censored with only a few subreddits, which means golang sooner or later might need to find another place. So better look now. https://twitter.com/infinitechan/status/801627024431271936

Oops not, apparently too many conspiracy folks involved.

https://np.reddit.com/r/law/comments/5eq9tl/what_does_it_mea...

It looks like it lost it accidently on the same date. A technicality.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#328

Post by hackerboos » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:32 PM UTC

j1vms wrote: post #324

I know people are talking again about a distributed (blockchain-based?) forum preventing problems like this, and once that happens it will make "message forgery" like this a lot harder. But a "low-tech" solution in the mean time would be for users to post a public-key under their username/account. Then when they publish a message, they include a private-key encrypted SHA256 hash of the contents of their post and appe…

There's Bitmessage[1] but it needs a lot of work before it could replace Reddit.

[1] - https://bitmessage.org/wiki/Main_Page

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#329

Post by wott » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:35 PM UTC

bradfitz wrote: post #69

Tharkun wrote: post #9

Their motivation for leaving Reddit is incredibly silly. Especially given that Google Groups -- of all things -- is their preferred alternative.

I was the one who proposed deleting /r/golang. Google Groups is not my preferred alternative by any means. Google Groups is a 1990's webmail interface to crappy but federated SMTP. There is very little to like about it, but at least the underlying protocol (SMTP) is federated. It is NOT an alternative to Reddit, which has a nice UI & voting system. It's unfortunate that Reddit is not a reliable platform which can be…

> Google Groups is a 1990's webmail interface to crappy but federated SMTP.

You put the word 'crappy' in the wrong place. Google Groups is a crappy webmail interface to federated SMTP.

Hundreds of Googlers, during a dozen years, never managed to get SMTP or NNTP right, whereas many clients written by single independant developpers were at the same time more fully featured, more reliable and more respectful of standards and good pratices of interoperability. For many years, Google Groups was to NNTP/mailing lists web interface what Outlook was to mail clients. The difference is that after those many years, Outlook improved a bit.

Re: Deleting the golang subreddit

#330

Post by type0 » Fri, Nov 25, 2016, 11:42 PM UTC

wildmusings wrote: post #49

BoorishBears wrote: post #11

This is asinine and it going through would seriously harm how mature I assumed the community around Golang was (actually reading through those posts already did, but either way I guess I'm just one person right?). The CEO edited a comment and admitted he edited it, and it was stupid, and he shouldn't have done it. I'm 100% sure there is a way for someone at any given platform they'd choose to replace it with to acces…

I have no opinion whatsoever in this controversy about the golang sub. But I'd like to call out something in particular about the point you're making: I see this kind of reductionism to what's "technically possible" a lot around here in regards to security and user trust. Let's go back to meatspace to get a more balanced perspective perhaps. Your mailman can read your mail and steal your packages. Your bank can steal…

> Your mailman can read your mail and steal your packages. Your bank can steal your money. Your waiter can poison you. Your car mechanic can overcharge you.

And then they could end up prosecuted and/or loose their jobs, will any of it happen to Reddits CEO?