An account was suspended • Hacker News Board

Re: An account was suspended

#311

Post by freejazz » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:12 PM UTC

somehnacct3757 wrote: post #29

mschuster91 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even blue checkmarks don't help against trolls, far right and griefers running mass-report attacks. The problem at its core is that Twitter refuses to hire appropriate levels of moderation staff for the scale it has, and that it does nothing against raid instigators. Reddit at least has subreddit mods take care of most of the bullshit and at least the large subreddit mods have direct connections to Reddit, and Reddit…

There's no such thing as appropriate moderation at Twitter scale. It's societal techology we as humans do not have. Underlying moderation is some shared vision of decency - morality claims that should be enforced via justice. These claims certainly don't exist across nation borders, and they barely exist within a given nation's borders. The bot moderation conundrum is a wholly second moderation question layered on to…

"It's societal techology we as humans do not have"

Not sure about that. It's just more expensive than Twitter can afford. Same for Facebook and YouTube.

Re: An account was suspended

#312

Post by freejazz » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:13 PM UTC

JadeNB wrote: post #207

mschuster91 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But only a tiny fraction of the 829 M tweets a day are abusive.

> But only a tiny fraction of the 829 M tweets a day are abusive. But you have to read all 829 M to find the abusive ones—and you have to agree on what 'abusive' means.

Why would you need to do that? You can just have humans review the reports that algorithms generate...

Re: An account was suspended

#313

Post by Dylan16807 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

CharlesW wrote: post #277

brazzy wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong tree to bark up. "Permanently" only means there is no time limit with an automatic reactivation afterwards. It's absolutely possible for a "normie" to get a permanent ban reviewed and lifted.

The point is that they're using "permanently suspended" to mean "indefinitely suspended". They could also just say "suspended".

"Indefinitely" is reasonable, but doesn't make it clear that they have finished their current investigation. So it's also imperfect.

Just "suspended" is not a good option at all, because it says nothing about duration.

Re: An account was suspended

#314

Post by MichaelCollins » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:15 PM UTC

formerly_proven wrote: post #37

imhoguy wrote: post #24

Well, automated banning is going beyond absurd. OT but just yesterday I finally decided to join Discord fad for some open-source communities, but my freshly created account got instantly disabled after successful validation with email and phone, that without sending any message. Unfortunately I don't own a second phone number to register another one. I better stick with my veteran ways - IRC, mail-lists, forums. Matr…

It's actually remarkable how many users discord has considering how difficult it is to register an account that's not instantly shadowbanned or disabled.

There is no consistency to any of it. Some people sign up using mainstream KYC email accounts like gmail, give their phone numbers, connect from their residential IP with the desktop client, and get instabanned. Other people, like myself, sign up with shady throwaway email accounts like cock.li, provide no phone number, only connect from VPN IPs with a browser, and don't get banned even after two years.

Re: An account was suspended

#315

Post by cupofpython » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:16 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…

On one hand I agree fully with this. On the other hand, if the government either is now or will eventually be owned by corporations then we might as well start setting a precedent of holding large corporations to the same standards as government.

Re: An account was suspended

#316

Post by mannschott » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:16 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #295

CharlesW wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

"Permanently suspended" is neither accurate nor helpful. That an account can't leave that state is precisely what "permanently" means. Since an appeal is possible, "Indefinitely suspended" would be accurate.

Re: An account was suspended

#317

Post by pannSun » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:17 PM UTC

> After careful review

Twitter's business is promoting their platform to users, and making money off showing ads to them. Calling whatever automated joke that took place a "careful review" is lying about their platform, about facts material to one's decision to keep, or start, using it.

In other words, they are promoting their product using lies, no different than if they were selling cars, and claiming they had 4-wheel drive when in fact they have only 2.

This is fraud, a crime.

Re: An account was suspended

#318

Post by MikePlacid » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:18 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…

So.

1. There were bad people on the site, whom other people (you included) wanted to shut up. The site refused to do so. This speaks to the quality of the site, no? They refused to censor something while there was a strong push to censor it - that means they will probably not censor you, when your opinion will differ from the opinion of powerful people. That means that a person should rather support the site that does not censor opinions the person does not agree with.

Unless the person hopes to always agree with the opinions of the powerful people even when the powerful opinions change.

2. The logic of the federal constitution prohibiting only Congress to pass censorship laws, as far as I get it was: if a business indulges in censorship, customers can drop it and go to its competition. That's exactly what I am doing - defending the American way of life one less purchase on Amazon at a time. Suggestion not to worry is rather strange in the context: the federal constitution puts the task of stopping censorship in private businesses on private citizens, me (and you) included.

3. Actually, I live in California and California constitution protects my right of speech from private censorship too! It even works - if a private business is a shopping mall, eg. But it does not work for Google or Facebook. Because people do not think it's important. That means a piece of paper, even if it is named "constitution" can't protect the rights declared in it - if people stop thinking these rights are important. Why shouldn't I be worried - I have a "living experience" in a country with the right of free speech in the constitution only.

A clarification. 4. There were extremists on the site making calls to violence. Actually, at the moment of the de-platforming it was about "Russian propaganda". Some factual information was labelled "foreign propaganda" and censored. Again, I have and enormous "living experience" in the country with a permanent ban on "foreign propaganda".

A puzzle. 5. that is neither censorship as a society would consider it nor is it problematic.

My English is not that good but a dictionary tells me that:

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.

prob·lem·at·ic /ˌpräbləˈmadik/ adjective constituting or presenting a problem or difficulty.

To consider this neither a censorship nor problematic you should change dictionaries first (probably you all are tired of my mentioning my "living experience", but yes, I have that one too).

Re: An account was suspended

#319

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

rchaud wrote: post #246

Semaphor wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that he goes into detail why he is so pissed: > It’s the “after careful review” line that has me riled up tbh. I can understand why an automated system suspended it. Don’t lie to me! -- https://nitter.kavin.rocks/benthompson/status/15830633139484...

This is childish though. Ben has written about Twitter long enough to know how it works. Careful review doesn't mean that a human reviewed it, just that a group of them were highly paid to implement the system of rules that banned him.

Knowing how it works doesn't preclude being upset about it.

Re: An account was suspended

#320

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 5:21 PM UTC

fleddr wrote: post #151

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #67

I'm a big fan of Ben Thompson, and I'm not necessarily on Twitter's side here, but this to me seems more like a case of Ben whining about "Spam is when someone else sends it". From his own words, this "Stratechery Interviews" account was a new account that only sent out tweets of links from multiple locations around the world. In other words, the only thing really distinguishing it from spam on a technical level is t…

New account. So? People create new accounts all the time. How do accounts come into existence? Tweeting out links. So? One of the most basic use cases there are, for example a brand tweeting links to press releases. From multiple locations. So? You mean like every multinational? None of these factors have any smoking gun indicator to decisively and permanently suspend an account. On the other end of the spectrum we h…

This is faulty analysis. Of course not any single one of these things by itself would indicate spam, but a yes, a brand new account that only tweets links, from multinational locations, would probably be spam the vast, vast majority of the time.