A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter • Hacker News Board

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#151

Post by batch12 » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:07 PM UTC

bdhajaona wrote: post #33

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #12

This is how big tech does damage to humans. Love it or hate it, the online world is our current public square. A public square, in the united states, has typically been an area where people can shout out their concerns or whatever they want to anyone who can listen and the government cannot stop it. Currently, our public squares are owned by private megacorporations that not only ban people for reasons many people ag…

> Currently, our public squares are owned by private megacorporations Here's the problem I have with this analogy. Is it analogous to a public square (as in public property, owned by the state, maintained by tax payer money)? Or is it a private property that allows people to congregate for free but puts up ads to raise money, and many consider it as good as a public square, because most people they like hang out here…

> private property that allows people to congregate for free

People keep implying (and maybe you aren't and I am associating you with them unfairly) that we should be willing to deal with these issues because giving up our privacy/rights is a fair exchange for access to a platform. If people didn't give Facebook access to store and share content that they create, it wouldn't exist.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#152

Post by mpeg » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

lebed2045 wrote: post #50

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #12

This is how big tech does damage to humans. Love it or hate it, the online world is our current public square. A public square, in the united states, has typically been an area where people can shout out their concerns or whatever they want to anyone who can listen and the government cannot stop it. Currently, our public squares are owned by private megacorporations that not only ban people for reasons many people ag…

I’m ex Facebook software engineer (even had selfie with Zuckerberg as the avatar picture) who got banned on Facebook. Up to this day I have no clue what for. But it’s extremely annoying because I lost lots of photos that I didn’t back up and close to thousand contracts of people. Users should definitely own this data, not a corporation.

Maybe you got banned because you had a selfie with zuck as the profile picture.

Some automated system trying to prevent celebrity impersonation might have flagged you.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#153

Post by Sakos » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

noSyncCloud wrote: post #30

Sakos wrote: post #8

> But there’s also a larger thing here where Twitter apparently has moderation tools so powerful that they can immediately trigger bans for things other than what they’re actually looking for. The actual execution leaves a lot to be desired here, but the itchy trigger finger cannot be denied. Somehow they can do this, but racial slurs are generally pretty okay, white supremacy is largely ignored, and every Twitter tr…

Same thing on Reddit. You can basically advocate for genocide, completely unhindered, by calling entire classes of people "degenerate" (literal Nazi rhetoric), but get banned for calling it out.

It reminds me of zero tolerance of violence policies at school, where the victims would often be punished instead.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#154

Post by zionic » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:08 PM UTC

noSyncCloud wrote: post #30

Sakos wrote: post #8

> But there’s also a larger thing here where Twitter apparently has moderation tools so powerful that they can immediately trigger bans for things other than what they’re actually looking for. The actual execution leaves a lot to be desired here, but the itchy trigger finger cannot be denied. Somehow they can do this, but racial slurs are generally pretty okay, white supremacy is largely ignored, and every Twitter tr…

Same thing on Reddit. You can basically advocate for genocide, completely unhindered, by calling entire classes of people "degenerate" (literal Nazi rhetoric), but get banned for calling it out.

Maybe 10 years ago this was true, but Reddit today is heavily censored at the admin level.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#155

Post by pclmulqdq » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:09 PM UTC

OrangeMonkey wrote: post #117

bdhajaona wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Currently, our public squares are owned by private megacorporations Here's the problem I have with this analogy. Is it analogous to a public square (as in public property, owned by the state, maintained by tax payer money)? Or is it a private property that allows people to congregate for free but puts up ads to raise money, and many consider it as good as a public square, because most people they like hang out here…

See, I think you got into the area that I am troubled by. I will state two things I consider to be true that are mutually exclusive: * Online spaces (facebook, twitter, etc), when they reach a certain level, are de-facto public spaces and excluding people from it by big tech is harmful to humanity. * Online spaces owned by a private corporation is for their benefit, not humanities, and forcing them to keep others on…

The law deals with this all the time, but it becomes complex when you cross jurisdiction boundaries. If a corporation wants to operate a public space, like a common area within a company town, you generally have to follow the law on what speech is allowed in that space. If your square is in the US, you have to allow Nazis to protest, but if it's in Germany, you probably have a duty to call the police on the Nazis to stop them. What do you do?

Corporations often operate public squares to their benefit, so I have no problem with them having to follow local laws on what needs to happen in that public square. Google already personalizes your search results, and Facebook personalizes your feed. They can add local laws into that personalization algorithm.

Edit: Updated the example to be correct.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#156

Post by OrangeMonkey » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

feurio wrote: post #144

ricardobeat wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a very naive argument. If your friends and family are on Facebook, your work contacts across the country are on Twitter, the only forums left alive on the web are on Reddit, how can you not need them? These things have replaced existing connections you used to have via other channels. You can not step away without severing them now, it is no longer a matter of personal choice.

If you get banned, just create another account and then don't do the thing that got you banned. It's really not that difficult.

Banned users creating new accounts is not a feature, its a 'bug' that the current platforms are trying to fix.

Ever create a new facebook account? Even as a flesh and blood human being? Lots of folks have tried to do this for oculus and a great number of them were banned. It made the news on HNN. Facebook is fixing this bug now, and the other sites are trying to do the same.

Eventually, when the big tech companies have 'fixed the bug' and your ban is - in fact - permanent and for life. . . what then?

"Don't do bad things" - a simple question... if the 50's/60's civil rights movement was done today on facebook, would MLK have been banned from twitter/facebook/instagram? I think he would be.

If you know a way to fix this, let me know. I think we - as humans - need to fix this sooner rather than later.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#157

Post by weird-eye-issue » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

carbadtraingood wrote: post #142

weird-eye-issue wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm surprised to hear there's that much regulation in Thailand (if it's true). I do know a couple porn sites are blocked here though I own a site that's monetized primarily off display ads and I can tell you that advertising revenue in those countries is abysmally low so they probably just don't want to expend any effort to support those countries

Thailand has laws about how one can talk about the king, right? Maybe there's no safe harbor provisions for websites, and a site this size is too small to fight, but big enough to attract attention?

Yeah actually I completely forgot about that too somehow. And there are strict libel laws as well

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#158

Post by JackFr » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

ricardobeat wrote: post #62

Forgeties79 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am so tired of the public square analogy. You don’t need Twitter. You don’t need Facebook. You don’t need Reddit. And what’s more, you can still read them if you’re banned. If you think it’s ok for a restaurant to turn you away because of a dress code, then this is a non-issue. The are several major platforms you can use as a megaphone, just like you have plenty of restaurants to choose from for your meal. If you a…

That’s a very naive argument. If your friends and family are on Facebook, your work contacts across the country are on Twitter, the only forums left alive on the web are on Reddit, how can you not need them? These things have replaced existing connections you used to have via other channels. You can not step away without severing them now, it is no longer a matter of personal choice.

> If your friends and family are on Facebook, your work contacts across the country are on Twitter, the only forums left alive on the web are on Reddit, how can you not need them?

You can absolutely step away from them and it’s not even hard. Call, text or email your friends and family. It’s far more intimate and frankly more satisfying. You lose the ability to broadcast a curated persona, but honestly in the grand scheme of things that’s better for both you and the rest of humanity.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#159

Post by troymc » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:10 PM UTC

mikkergp wrote: post #113

spicyusername wrote: post #7

It seems like the problem with many of these tech companies (and many modern companies in general) is that they've scaled faster than they have the ability to operate properly. "How can we possibly moderate properly without AI?" is really just another way of saying "We don't want to pay the money it's going to cost to moderate effectively and we're going to cross our fingers that we can solve problems caused by techn…

When you say moderate without AI are you suggesting human moderation? This is not really a good solution to this problem either. Paying people to traumatize themselves by watching video after video or reading tweet after tweet of the worst content society has to offer is dehumanizing.

AFAIK, most of the moderation on Reddit is done by unpaid humans, not AI. Reddit isn't perfect, of course, but their approach does scale.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#160

Post by gruez » Sat, Jul 23, 2022, 2:11 PM UTC

noSyncCloud wrote: post #30

Sakos wrote: post #8

> But there’s also a larger thing here where Twitter apparently has moderation tools so powerful that they can immediately trigger bans for things other than what they’re actually looking for. The actual execution leaves a lot to be desired here, but the itchy trigger finger cannot be denied. Somehow they can do this, but racial slurs are generally pretty okay, white supremacy is largely ignored, and every Twitter tr…

Same thing on Reddit. You can basically advocate for genocide, completely unhindered, by calling entire classes of people "degenerate" (literal Nazi rhetoric), but get banned for calling it out.

>You can basically advocate for genocide, completely unhindered, by calling entire classes of people "degenerate" (literal Nazi rhetoric),

Are you sure you're not reading too much into it? Without context it's really hard to tell whether a use of "degenerate" literally means you want to genocide some group.