Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#141

Post by tehlike » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

daenz wrote: post #123

clumpthump wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hanlon's Razor is, I believe, a good rule of thumb, but people keep using it in situations such as this one where it's not just potentially malice (wanting to harm someone for little other reason than wanting to see them hurt or wanting to hurt) but also greed/self-interest. Hanlon's Razor as stated makes sense to me. I see a lot more stupidity in the world than I see people wanting to hurt for no other reason. But g…

Yeah, I think Hanlon's Razor was intended to apply to individuals, not organizations. Often the "stupidity" of an organization is a shield for malice or greed.

Organizations are made up of people. When you have 5000 people making small decisions with 0.1% possibility of being wrong, if have 40% of chance having at least one mistake over 5000 decisions.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#142

Post by zaroth » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

saurik wrote: post #104

tehlike wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please do so. "Absolutely possible" is showing me you are way too confident of things and this usually is a sign you actually never done so.

The idea that you believe that a system I am saying shouldn't be built will somehow have a bug in it despite not existing is ridiculous. I will once again repeat, therefore, with more context: I am not claiming one should or can build systems without mistakes... I am claiming that, because we make mistakes --and because we all know that we all (including myself) make mistakes--we should not build certain kinds of sys…

Every feature has a complexity burden it imposes on the overall system, and also a risk profile to causing failures as the overall environment changes.

Some features are definitely not worth the complexity they impose. Sometimes a feature is so important you need to add it despite the systemic risk that it obviously carries.

Most of the time the designer or implementer doesn’t stop to even consider this analysis and just fires off some code to add the feature and lets it become “technical debt” because it’s SEP at that point.

The best engineers have an immediate intuition about these types of features and a visceral reaction when asked to code them. Something along the lines of, “I have a bad feeling about this” to “No way I’m coding this, it’s a metaphorical bridge just waiting to collapse.”

If malice requires intent I think most of the time there isn’t actual malice. If malice can stem from ignorance then I fully agree with you.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#143

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

mikeyouse wrote: post #114

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know what section 230 repeal has to do with it. Companies would still be able to block random links like this if section 230 is repealed; they’d probably do it more often.

Repealing 230 would literally kill large swaths of the internet. If platforms like Twitter or Reddit were legally responsible for what their users post, they would need to institute white lists to avoid being bankrupted. Can you imagine the amount of low-level casual defamation across the entirety of Facebook? Or Reddit? The amount of copyrighted material stolen and posted? There would be an overnight industry of peo…

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#144

Post by alaricus » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:24 PM UTC

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #13

bombcar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of thing that's interesting to document for a potential anti-trust case. Blocking the entire domain because it's "spammy" could be argued as fair - but only blocking the main links is more suspect.

antitrust? Is twitter a monopoly now?

of course it is a monopoly.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#145

Post by alaricus » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #11

I bet it's likely a bug. There were times i wasnt able to post LinkedIn urls in the past. I bet it's their crawler/integrity service having hard time. Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence.

It doesn't matter either way, the end result is the same.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#146

Post by alaricus » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:25 PM UTC

sequoia wrote: post #22

A lot of people here are jumping to conclusions based on what could simply be a bug. Why not wait 24hrs and see if this is actually some policy or just a mistake.

Bug or malice, the end result is the same. I hope EU regulators pick on this and land a hefty fine.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#147

Post by MrPatan » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:27 PM UTC

tehlike wrote: post #11

I bet it's likely a bug. There were times i wasnt able to post LinkedIn urls in the past. I bet it's their crawler/integrity service having hard time. Never assume malice when it can be sufficiently explained by a bug or incompetence.

Yes, but: Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistiguishable from malice

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#148

Post by derekzhouzhen » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

Linking to twitter is horrible too. Try this in your terminal:

> curl https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1532710931590959104

There is nothing of value in the static part of the html. For fuck's sake, there is no even title.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#149

Post by hkt » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:28 PM UTC

VWWHFSfQ wrote: post #13

bombcar wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the kind of thing that's interesting to document for a potential anti-trust case. Blocking the entire domain because it's "spammy" could be argued as fair - but only blocking the main links is more suspect.

antitrust? Is twitter a monopoly now?

US antitrust's main consideration is price, the EU's is price and "fairness" to competition.. so, maybe the EU could get involved but the US probably never will.

Re: Twitter Blocks Linking to Mastodon.social

#150

Post by mardifoufs » Fri, Jun 03, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

stimpson_j_cat wrote: post #129

colpabar wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

It's not a bug to disallow "distribution of hacked material" in your Terms of Service. If you think it was political, you should certainly inform the FEC! They found that Twitter had acted "for commercial reasons and not for the purpose of influencing an election" so they'd appreciate the heads up.

Which would've been more believable, if they literally did nothing about the thousands of tweets sharing the hacked Trucker rally database. And it wasn't just random accounts, a lot of major north American/Canadian newspapers shared articles that not only mentionned the hacks and hinted at where to find them, but also explicitly detailed the contents of the database.