Live data from Hacker News

A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

fanbyte.com

311–320 of 577 posts

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#311
post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention the Orwellian proposition: "delete the pic we deemed wrong so we can unban you". Apparently it's hard to just delete the offending pic, it's better to teach you a lesson and make you do it. There are four lights

It's not censorship when you delete your own content.

/s?

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#312

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…

> 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. Growing up in Birmingham, AL I had a couple teachers who had dog bites and remembered the hoses from when they tried to shout out whatever they wanted in public squares. It's always interesting how people have such a rosy view o…

You are perpetuating a myth. Malcom Gladwell researched and presented this in his Podcast episode - The Foot Soldier of Birmingham. https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/revisionist-history/the-foot...

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#313
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Most moderation on Reddit is done by automated bots. Without those it wouldn't scale so humans are not enough.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is fine. Because if the company has no physical presence in a certain country, they can basically ignore their laws, because what’s the country going to do? Block your website? Having an employee there establishes physical presence.

Right, but their stated reason for instituting the policy in the first place was that they couldn't ignore Serbian laws if their websites were available to be viewed in Serbia.

I'd consider the Serbian employee at risk if I wasn't following any applicable Serbian laws. Their explanation seems to be that even the legal review of these countries would cost far more than any revenue they are making, and their lawyers are advising these countries need that review.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was uncalled for man.

Why is it ok to collectively hate bankers, people working in big tobacco, salesmen in big pharma and many other industries that we know for being damaging to society, but when it comes to Big Tech we suddenly think "it is uncalled for"? Facebook is a deplorable company and its leadership is known to have a completely broken moral compass. But why should we hold only the leadership accountable? It is the developers, t…

I agree. And, "just following orders" (i.e. "just doing his job") isn't a legal defense to following unlawful orders. Nor should it be a moral defense to doing unethical things just because there's a paycheck involved.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#316
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…

The real stinger is that there's no legal requirement to compensate someone for wrongdoing. Ban someone by accident, and then in a "review" uphold the ban despite overwhelming evidence? That should be a fine, paid out in part to the wronged party.

Twitter is entitled to deny service to anyone for any reason. Why should there be compensation for "accidental" bans?

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#317

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…

It can be solved by realizing that private websites ARE NOT public fora.

They have never been, are not now, and will never be.

HN has, and will again, removed comments that I have made again, particularly if they stray too far from the party line regarding cryptobros, SEObros, and devs who whore themselves out to ad companies when they could be doing actual real work that benefits humanity while making just a little teeny tiny less money but whores are whores so they'll keep on keeping on.

I'm fine with that. And you should be too.

If HN was a public square I could tell them to fuck off. Nothing I said would meet any community standards and obscenity triggers in any courtroom in any jurisdiction of any court in all of the United States.

"Oh but HN isn't as big as Twit.." is bullshit and has been tried before. Anyone who makes this argument is so intellectually bankrupt they should be banned from the internet for being too stupid to operate an internet browser.

You have the same "public square" rights in Times Square that you have in Lotsee Oklahoma (0.02 mi sq), which is smaller than Times Square (0.25 mi sq).

Private parties can set arbitrary, capricious, subjective, unfair, and mean rules about what they allow on their platforms, and don't even have to set any rules besides "because we said so".

Anything less is tyranny.

edit: if public websites are TRUELY public fora, there could be a very strong argument made that hiding my comment due to downvotes is an assault on my rights, similar to covering my sign with a blanket as I try to agitate in ACTUAL, REAL, public squares for civil rights or the legalization of marijuana or the proselytizing of my TIMECUBE religion. Unless, of course there exists "important and real" free speech and "not important" free speech but allowing for that distinction is probably more dangerous than having no free speech at all...

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it ok to collectively hate bankers, people working in big tobacco, salesmen in big pharma and many other industries that we know for being damaging to society, but when it comes to Big Tech we suddenly think "it is uncalled for"? Facebook is a deplorable company and its leadership is known to have a completely broken moral compass. But why should we hold only the leadership accountable? It is the developers, t…

What's wrong with Facebook? I really like their features.

Mostly the spying on people against their wishes part, then exploiting this data in commercial purposes. Even if you aren't a member, Facebook keeps a shadow profile on you, so it's next level surveillance.

Re: A clip from Stray got me banned from Twitter

#320

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…

> This is how big tech does damage to humans.

This being whatever AI flagged his post. I would not be surprised. I'm seeing a trend where, Facebook, Discord and I guess now Twitter are trying to use AI to moderate. It is going to backfire hard. Lots of blatantly bad things stay on their platform, but innocent nonsense gets you banned. Either their content moderators are really bad at their job, or silently protesting, or there's an AI involved.

In my case someone posted a video featuring a giant spider on Facebook in a little girls hand, it was bigger than her face, my comment was a meme comment you see all over the internet "girl put that spider down we gotta set the house on fire" there's a recurring meme about burning homes to kill spiders due to arachnophobia. Innocent joke, not actually serious, I got a warning, I guess they thought I was actually advocating burning down a home, but I was not. I appealed and immediately not long after I was denied. There's an AI involved, and whoever does appeals is lazy or the AI itself, or has no concept of internet content memes.

Post reply on HN