An account was suspended • Hacker News Board

Re: An account was suspended

#281

Post by 1970-01-01 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

Dove wrote: post #262

I can't decide whether to be darkly amused or just depressed, watching millions of humans learn together, as if for the first time, that Government Is Hard. Much ink has been spilled on the topic of governing well. It could fairly be called the entire output of now risen and fallen civilizations. Institutions such as laws, rights, courts, judges, and citizenship are many millenia old, and people have always been will…

Its hard, but there are known ways to fix this process that Twitter just doesn't care to implement. Placing the banhammer into one all-knowing judge, jury, and executioner algorithm is a really stupid idea. Twitter's auto-banhammer power should be spread across multiple algorithms, with each one reporting back how it voted and exactly why it made its decision. The decisions should be completely transparent to everyone.

Re: An account was suspended

#282

Post by djbusby » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

breck wrote: post #168

djbusby wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are the first person I've heard mention FarCaster.

Disclosure: I'm often wrong about these things. user: breck created: August 24, 2007

What? I don't care how old your account is. It's still first I've heard of a thing "everyone" is talking about.

Which is a surprise right? Given how popular it is on HN:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Re: An account was suspended

#283

Post by jscipione » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

In related technocratic censorship news YouTube has begun algorithmically shadow banning comments that go against the woke state religion. This is clearly evident by the comment count not match the actual number of comments and is also easy to test by commenting something negative with key words like “Clinton” and “steal” and then looking for your comment in incognito mode. Our Democracy is in great peril because people cannot make an informed vote without having access to dissent and it’s no coincidence that this censorship is ramping up as we get closer to the midterm elections in the US.

Ben Thompson being banned by Twitter is not an isolated event, it’s part of a larger assault on our human rights that is deepening ever more and more dangerously every day.

Re: An account was suspended

#284

Post by lapcat » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #247

michaelmcdonald wrote: post #2

Ben's account is already un-suspended, but only because he has a major presence and large audience (I would be shocked if people at Twitter didn't see this minutes into it happening or if Ben didn't have some direct line to various high up employees there). For the rest of us peasants: good luck getting help.

I've played devil's advocate elsewhere in the thread, but this is such a petty and irrelevant kerfuffle, as far as Big-Tech-Censorship goes. By Ben's own description of how the @StratecheryINT account was operated [0] -- i.e. "a new account that has posted a bunch of links (all Stratechery interviews) in a short amount of time, from multiple locations around the world." -- this is exactly the kind of low-hanging frui…

> Verified accounts like Thompson's get a lot of leeway with bending/breaking the rules before facing actual punishment.

Which rules did he break?

Re: An account was suspended

#285

Post by tablespoon » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

mritchie712 wrote: post #193

themitigating wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused about what he means. "After careful review" means that a human double checked it right?

"After careful review" *implies* a human checked it. His beef is that it's quite unlikely a human actually reviewed it.

> "After careful review" implies a human checked it. His beef is that it's quite unlikely a human actually reviewed it.

Not just that a human checked it, but a human carefully checked it. Humans are so often quick and/or sloppy that the word careful was needed even before the invention of computers.

Re: An account was suspended

#286

Post by johnchristopher » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:30 PM UTC

How is one supposed to understand what's going in with that submission ? It's like getting one word out of a whole dispute between people. There's 0 context unless you know the particular players involved and the whole story.

Re: An account was suspended

#287

Post by marban » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:32 PM UTC

My 15y old Reddit Gold account was suspended after I posted a crypto-critical WSJ link. It's not your parent's Web anymore....

Re: An account was suspended

#288

Post by josephcsible » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:34 PM UTC

morby wrote: post #201

pentae wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they decided to terminate Parler not even giving them time to move hosts, that wasn't political censorship?

There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. A *private* entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company because of that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic. More people and businesses should be willing to refuse business to entities that seek to harass, abuse, or promote violence to another group of people. What you’re worried about is governmental…

> There were extremists on the site making calls to violence.

Extremists on Twitter often make calls to violence too. Why do we let Twitter stay online and just ban those individuals instead of kicking Twitter offline?

Re: An account was suspended

#289

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

morby wrote: post #201

pentae wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When they decided to terminate Parler not even giving them time to move hosts, that wasn't political censorship?

There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. A *private* entity deciding they don’t want to do business with a company because of that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic. More people and businesses should be willing to refuse business to entities that seek to harass, abuse, or promote violence to another group of people. What you’re worried about is governmental…

[deleted]

Re: An account was suspended

#290

Post by danso » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:36 PM UTC

lapcat wrote: post #269

danso wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the thread, Ben alluded to automated, possibly distributed activity: > For the record, this is a new account that has posted a bunch of links (all Stratechery interviews) in a short amount of time, from multiple locations around the world. It seems obvious that the tweets were automated -- during some periods, it tweeted every ~10 seconds. If it were switching IPs at that same rate, especially if the IPs were in k…

> there's probably more tolerance for weird activity Well, my Twitter account has been suspended at least 4 times for dumb reasons or no apparent reason at all. > nothing but suspicious spam It was not spam. Tweeting is not spam. Tweeting a lot is not even spam. Unsolicited replies, for example, can be spam. Ben's account did not interact with anyone. There was no unsolicited interaction whatsoever. Also, there was n…

Twitter has an "automation rules" [0] page which does indeed affirm that users are allowed to post "automated Tweets based on sources of outside information, such as an RSS feed, weather data, etc". But you're right, "spammy" isn't the right word since on the automation rules page and elsewhere, spam is generally understood by Twitter to be unsolicited interaction.

But the point is moot for now since Ben (AFAIK) hasn't posted any more details about the suspension note. IIRC, the suspension email is supposed to list the alleged violations, and I don't think Ben has tweeted a screenshot of that email. [1]

[0] https://help.twitter.com/en/rules-and-policies/twitter-autom...

[1] https://twitter.com/hollandcourtney/status/11255719071877242...