An account was suspended • Hacker News Board

Re: An account was suspended

#291

Post by MichaelCollins » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:37 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.

Amazon sees fit to sell innumerable books by extremists which call to violence. Particularly, but not only, many famous religious texts and political manifestos.

Re: An account was suspended

#292

Post by Shish2k » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:38 PM UTC

Turing_Machine wrote: post #38

capableweb wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was only so easy. If you're running a business, you most likely need to meet people where they are at. Sometimes, your target audience are mostly on Facebook, then you most likely need to be at Facebook in order to reach them. Sometimes they are on Twitter, then you need to be there. Other times, you're doing something completely different, like running a restaurant, then you need to be visible on Google Maps/T…

> Sometimes they are on Twitter, then you need to be there. Wow, that's a depressing thought. I think I'd prefer to find a different line of business, if it were me.

What lines of business don’t require customers being able to find you?

Re: An account was suspended

#293

Post by MichaelCollins » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:39 PM UTC

dekhn wrote: post #280

MikePlacid wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cen·sorship /ˈsensərSHip/ noun 1. the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, news, etc. that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security.

thanks for the dictionary definition, Professor Placid

Better than your ass-pulled definition, Professor Dekhn.

Re: An account was suspended

#294

Post by tablespoon » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:40 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #228

tablespoon wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm confused about what he means. "After careful review" means that a human double checked it right? I think he's angry that didn't actually carefully review anything. Which probably means "careful" is one of those words that sounds positive but is legally meaningless, so corporations will abuse it shamelessly for propaganda purposes.

Can we know for sure that they "didn't actually carefully review anything"? Likely thousands of accounts are auto-flagged every minute(second?), and for permanent suspension (as opposed to the much more common "locked because of suspicious automated activity/bad tweet"), maybe there's a process in which a report listing the suspicious signals is glanced at by a human auditor. I'm talking like seconds of review, e.g.…

> Can we know for sure that they "didn't actually carefully review anything"?

We can't, but that's part of the propaganda game.

> ...maybe there's a process in which a report listing the suspicious signals is glanced at by a human auditor.

> I'm talking like seconds of review, e.g. the report says "In 5 minute span, account tweeted from a known U.S. AWS server and a Europe AWS server, etc. etc. Confirm suspension", and the human clicks "Confirm" and moves on to the next hundred reports to "review"

That's actually a good example of not being careful.

Re: An account was suspended

#295

Post by danso » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #275

danso wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Do people seriously think every such case -- an empty days-old account suddenly doing spam-like activity -- should be manually reviewed? The problem is not that the account triggered an algorithmic tripwire, but that the explanatory copy is a customer-hostile lie. It states in no uncertain terms that the suspension was further "carefully reviewed" to be found correct, and is also permanent. Obviously, it wasn't cor…

> The problem is not that the account triggered an algorithmic tripwire, but that the explanatory copy is a customer-hostile lie. It states in no uncertain terms that the suspension was further "carefully reviewed" to be found correct, and is also permanent. Obviously, it wasn't correct, and wasn't permanent.

"Permanently suspended" seems both accurate and helpful -- it doesn't mean that the account can't leave that state, but that unlike most other suspensions, the account will not be unsuspended after a set period of time. The note that Ben posted explicitly says "you can submit an appeal", which would imply to most people the possibility of reversion.

Re: An account was suspended

#296

Post by heckerhut » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:41 PM UTC

heckerhut wrote: post #255

We need web3 to unbreak the web. Hear me out before you rage-downvote me. “Web3” most of all means a functioning identity model that is platform-independent, user-owned and thus scales the solution to the bot problem beyond the limitations of a single platform.

No post body was provided.

Re: An account was suspended

#297

Post by zeruch » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

rjzzleep wrote: post #258

danso wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It doesn't have to be a lot of links, if you piss off the wrong people and they massreport you you're temporarily out. You can reach out to support, but I don't know that support actually ever responds to any requests. Apparently according to posts on reddit if you add your number to twitter and something happens you won't even be able to ever remove it. Similarly they have weird intransparent policies regarding what…

"It doesn't have to be a lot of links, if you piss off the wrong people and they massreport you you're temporarily out."

Or permanently. I once responded to an inane Kardashian tweet with a very dry restatement that she got famous for a boring porn tape and a father who got OJ Simpson off of a murder rap.

I was told that was "a threat" and perma-banned. 12 years of an account, spun into the void. I'd be angry but it's more embarrassing as an observation.

Twitter supports a usenet-on-acid model of bumrushing fan-bases on one side, and a long tail of bots and noise. It's truly strange how its become what it has.

Re: An account was suspended

#298

Post by danso » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:42 PM UTC

altairprime wrote: post #268

danso wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How does banning this account reduce spam? Removing it from the search results and unlinking its @handle in tweets from other accounts would have been enough, if it was spam, to prevent it from being shown at all to anyone. If it’s useful for non-spam people who want to follow it from an offsite link, it’ll gain valid followers that can hint towards undoing its shadow ban over a long period of time — and by not doing…

u/lapcat accurately pointed out to me that a new account rapidly posting links is not likely "spam" by Twitter's definitions [0]. As I said in the reply, Ben hasn't yet posted the list of rules that Twitter says he allegedly broke.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33276718

Re: An account was suspended

#299

Post by zeruch » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 4:44 PM UTC

celeritascelery wrote: post #256

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.

This is another power imbalance that is so frustrating. The account was “permanently suspended”, which you think means permanently suspended. But that only applies to normies. All the words are meaningless if twitter says otherwise. It’s really like living under a medieval king who is a law unto himself.

"All the words are meaningless if twitter says otherwise. It’s really like living under a medieval king who is a law unto himself."

That's every company policy, ultimately. C-Suites and the like exist partially to do "exception handling" (or for all y'all Papists out there, "special dispensations")

Re: An account was suspended

#300

Post by Multicomp » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:00 PM UTC

shadowgovt wrote: post #245

IshKebab wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Offer reasonable options to get it reinstated of course.

I'm not sure what reasonable looks like when a system has 237 million daily active users and the reinstatement system itself would be intentionally gamed by adversaries. Do we have any examples to draw from operating at that scale? Due to the Musk purchase, we have a rare public disclosure of a major tech giant's internal workings where Twitter claims ( https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/jul/07/twitter-s...…

How about an escrow-style thing?

"We charge $100 to have a human look at this case, if the suspension was incorrect we reinstate the account and your money. If not, we tell you what actions you can take that would un-violate our policies so you could be re-instated."

Spammers doing selenium powered spam would never pay for that, but the real folks who are not tight with large audiences would have an option.