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Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

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Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#361

Post by altacc »

hackerlight wrote: post #326
graybeardhacker wrote: post #274

The solution to X (Twitter) sucking is to stop using it. It will either: get fixed or go out of business and be replaced. It seems we've become a society that rewards bad practices with attention which is all any company on the web is trying to get, your attention.

> It seems we've become a society that rewards bad practices with attention I have a very different way of looking at this. It's not us that gives attention. It is them that take it via exploiting our evolved inflexible cognitive systems for attention/reward/desire/anger/lust. We are moths to a flame. The moth's free will isn't to blame for its inability to avoid it. Our cognitive systems are fixed, we can't just tur…

Tim Wu makes a similar point in his book The Attention Merchants. Humans are interested in things and throughout time various people and media (which tends to be controlled by a small number of people) have been working to capture our attention. It is very hard to totally opt out of something that is so pervasive, like fish trying to ignore water.

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#362

Post by DamonHD »

rhaksw wrote: post #334
DamonHD wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, increasing cost or delay even a little bit cuts out a disproportionate amount of bad stuff. I once had the domain 'moronsinahurry' registered, though not with this group in mind...

In your experience where? No research has been done about whether shadow moderation is good or bad for discourse. It was simply adopted by the entire internet because it's perceived as "easier." Indeed, for platforms and advertisers, it certainly is an easier way to control messaging. It fools good-faith users all the time. I've shared examples of that elsewhere in this thread.

I think that you are reading this too narrowly. SPAMers etc are often in a hurry. For example, simply avoiding responding for a second or two to an inbound SMTP connection drops a whole group of bad email attempts on the floor while no one else even notices.[0] Another example: manually delaying admitting new users to a forum (and in the process checking for bad activity from their IP/email etc) seems to shed another bunch of unwanteds, and raising the cost a little with some simple questions on the way in, also. This point about small extra delay and effort deterring disproportionately bad behaviour is quite broad.

[0] https://deer-run.com/users/hal/sysadmin/greet_pause.html

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#363

Post by spiderfarmer »

darksofa wrote: post #261
spiderfarmer wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the value Breitbart adds to the internet outweigh the negatives of turning people into dangerous fascists by weaponizing misinformation? No. Does the value added by sources like the NYT outweigh the negatives of being occasionally biased or outright wrong? Yes.

Does the value the NYT adds to the internet outweigh the negatives of turning people into dangerous communists by weaponizing misinformation? No. Does the value added by sources like the Breitbart outweigh the negatives of being occasionally biased or outright wrong? Yes.

I can tell you all the ways in which you’re wrong, but something tells me you wont trust anything anyone says unless it confirms your biases.

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#364

Post by rhaksw »

DamonHD wrote: post #362
rhaksw wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your experience where? No research has been done about whether shadow moderation is good or bad for discourse. It was simply adopted by the entire internet because it's perceived as "easier." Indeed, for platforms and advertisers, it certainly is an easier way to control messaging. It fools good-faith users all the time. I've shared examples of that elsewhere in this thread.

I think that you are reading this too narrowly. SPAMers etc are often in a hurry. For example, simply avoiding responding for a second or two to an inbound SMTP connection drops a whole group of bad email attempts on the floor while no one else even notices.[0] Another example: manually delaying admitting new users to a forum (and in the process checking for bad activity from their IP/email etc) seems to shed another…

In your cost/benefit analysis, you overlook the harms created by secretive actions. That's why I asked for details about your experience.

The internet has run on secrets for 40 years. That doesn't make it right. Now that everyone and their mother is online, it's time to consider the harms that secrets create.

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#365

Post by DamonHD »

rhaksw wrote: post #364
DamonHD wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that you are reading this too narrowly. SPAMers etc are often in a hurry. For example, simply avoiding responding for a second or two to an inbound SMTP connection drops a whole group of bad email attempts on the floor while no one else even notices.[0] Another example: manually delaying admitting new users to a forum (and in the process checking for bad activity from their IP/email etc) seems to shed another…

In your cost/benefit analysis, you overlook the harms created by secretive actions. That's why I asked for details about your experience. The internet has run on secrets for 40 years. That doesn't make it right. Now that everyone and their mother is online, it's time to consider the harms that secrets create.

There are bad actors, and many of them are lazy/stupid. Their activity imposes a tax / harms on the rest of us. One way to minimise that harm to the good actors includes some mildly covert measures. The sendmail GreetPause is hardly a secret for example: it catches a common deliberate malicious protocol violation and is publicly documented. This is not unique to the Internet nor new; see also banking and personal security and so on.

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#366

Post by rhaksw »

DamonHD wrote: post #365
rhaksw wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In your cost/benefit analysis, you overlook the harms created by secretive actions. That's why I asked for details about your experience. The internet has run on secrets for 40 years. That doesn't make it right. Now that everyone and their mother is online, it's time to consider the harms that secrets create.

There are bad actors, and many of them are lazy/stupid. Their activity imposes a tax / harms on the rest of us. One way to minimise that harm to the good actors includes some mildly covert measures. The sendmail GreetPause is hardly a secret for example: it catches a common deliberate malicious protocol violation and is publicly documented. This is not unique to the Internet nor new; see also banking and personal sec…

This subthread started with a discussion about how "HN itself also shadow flags submissions" [1]. That's a slightly different form of moderation than the t.co delays.

Another commenter argued "Increasing cost of attacks is an effective defense strategy."

I argued it is not, and you said adding a delay can cut out bad stuff. Delays are certainly relevant to the main post, but that's not what I was referring to. And I certainly don't argue against using secrets for personal security! Securitizing public discourse, however, is another matter.

Can you elaborate on GreetPause? Was it to prevent a DDOS? I don't understand why bad requests couldn't just be rejected.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37130143

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#367

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #357
epistasis wrote: post #251

This is what I have come to expect from every person that calls themselves a "free speech absolutist." What they actually believe is that they should be able to say whatever they want and do whatever they want, personally, without any consequences for themselves. There is no grander principle than "my ability to do what I want and exert power over others however I want, without critique or criticism." I really wish t…

I call myself a free speech absolutist (or advocate at least, absolutist is more of a slur). False compromises belong in the past. What X is doing isn't free speech at all and they have stated that advertisers will dictate what content will be seen, there is no commitment to freedom of speech at all. But at least I can hold them responsible for violating their own stated values. The former Twitter leadership just hid…

> advocate at least, absolutist is more of a slur

Those two are enormously different, though. I'd consider myself an advocate, just as anyone who believes in a fair and free democracy should. But I am very far from being an absolutist — and I have a secret suspicion that nobody actually is. Musk certainly isn't.

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#368

Post by NiloCK »

I'm outing myself as an ignoramus* here, but could the title be edited to indicate that this belongs to twitter?

I glossed past this on first read because "some url shortener has shitty behavior" wasn't interesting to me. Hearing heard about twitter's throttling someplace else made me come back here because I was surprised not to have heard it about it here first.

*: stalwart radical who doesn't use twitter

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#369

Post by DamonHD »

rhaksw wrote: post #366
DamonHD wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are bad actors, and many of them are lazy/stupid. Their activity imposes a tax / harms on the rest of us. One way to minimise that harm to the good actors includes some mildly covert measures. The sendmail GreetPause is hardly a secret for example: it catches a common deliberate malicious protocol violation and is publicly documented. This is not unique to the Internet nor new; see also banking and personal sec…

This subthread started with a discussion about how "HN itself also shadow flags submissions" [1]. That's a slightly different form of moderation than the t.co delays. Another commenter argued "Increasing cost of attacks is an effective defense strategy." I argued it is not, and you said adding a delay can cut out bad stuff. Delays are certainly relevant to the main post, but that's not what I was referring to. And I…

Here's another reasonable summary:

https://www.revsys.com/tidbits/greet_pause-a-new-anti-spam-f...

I get several thousand SPAM attempts per day: I estimate that this one technique kills a large fraction of them. And look how old the feature is...

Re: Tell HN: t.co is adding a five-second delay to some domains

#370

Post by account42 »

dang wrote: post #163
renewiltord wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, unless surrogacymumbai.com is where we post right-wing news from, that's hardly a problem, eh?

I posted https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37131212 before noticing that you'd already made the same argument - sorry! But I have to leave it up because penispowerworldwide.com makes me laugh.

Finally pens are no longer constrained to just one island.
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