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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

#371

Post by rhaksw »

DamonHD wrote: post #369
rhaksw wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Okay, so the requests do get rejected, it just uses a delay to make that decision.

I don't consider GreetPause to be a form of shadow moderation because the sender knows the commands were rejected. The issue with shadow moderation on platforms is that the system shows you one thing while showing others something else.

Legally speaking, I have no problem with shadow moderation. I only argue it's morally wrong and bad for discourse. It discourages trust and encourages the growth of echo chambers and black-and-white thinking.

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

#372

Post by raxxorraxor »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #367
raxxorraxor wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

A few are and understand that most of the time your are defending scoundrels. But there is a sizeable and probable larger group that very easily wants to suppress speech they do not like. There never was a case where to much freedom of speech has been a significant problem, contrary to the other way around.

Next is misinformation and tomorrow you wonder why you cannot state your opinion anymore. A cycle that has been repeated ad nauseum. It just isn't a smart solution and causes more problems than it solves.

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

#373

Post by hk__2 »

RMPR wrote: post #309
ravetcofx wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon has been a breath of fresh air and you can get a really interesting feed going when you follow the right people and hashtags

And it can handle Twitter scale now https://blog.redplanetlabs.com/2023/08/15/how-we-reduced-the...

> And it can handle Twitter scale now

*in hosting costs.

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

#374

Post by DamonHD »

rhaksw wrote: post #371
DamonHD wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Okay, so the requests do get rejected, it just uses a delay to make that decision. I don't consider GreetPause to be a form of shadow moderation because the sender knows the commands were rejected. The issue with shadow moderation on platforms is that the system shows you one thing while showing others something else. Legally speaking, I have no problem with shadow moderation. I only argue it's morally wrong and bad…

How do you view the rest of typical SPAM filtering, where the mail is apparently accepted for delivery but then silently thrown away? For simplicity assume a system such as mine where I control the MTA and client, so no one is making decisions hidden from me as the end user who wants to get the ham and see no SPAM. (I get tens of ham per day and many many thousands of SPAM attempts.)

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

#375

Post by hk__2 »

johngladtj wrote: post #201
dang wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want us to be user hostile. Can you link to some examples?

I would consider any moderation action that isn't visible to users to be user hostile. If you're going to censor someone, you owe it to them to be honest about what you're doing to them.

Shadow banning is one of the most effective ways to fight spam and harassment. Not being "honest" with spammers and harassers can often be a good thing.

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

#376

Post by rhaksw »

DamonHD wrote: post #374
rhaksw wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so the requests do get rejected, it just uses a delay to make that decision. I don't consider GreetPause to be a form of shadow moderation because the sender knows the commands were rejected. The issue with shadow moderation on platforms is that the system shows you one thing while showing others something else. Legally speaking, I have no problem with shadow moderation. I only argue it's morally wrong and bad…

How do you view the rest of typical SPAM filtering, where the mail is apparently accepted for delivery but then silently thrown away? For simplicity assume a system such as mine where I control the MTA and client, so no one is making decisions hidden from me as the end user who wants to get the ham and see no SPAM. (I get tens of ham per day and many many thousands of SPAM attempts.)

With spam email, the recipient has a chance to recover the mail by looking in their spam folder.

No such spam folder is provided to the public on social media.

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

#377

Post by jquery »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #367
raxxorraxor wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Spam is an intractable problem for any so called free speech absolutist. One person's spam could be another person's desired message. But if a platform is overrun with spam, it becomes unusable for genuine discourse.

Maybe the biggest challenge is defining what constitutes "spam." While some cases seem clear-cut (e.g., repeated identical messages from bots, malware, phishing), others are quite subjective. Subtle marketing? Aggressive marketing? Repetitive but sincere advocacy for a cause? Repetitive but insincere trolling? Repetitive but sincere trolling?

All this seems rather obvious, so I was kind of surprised to see how many people bought into Elon's vision for Twitter, it was never workable.

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

#378

Post by jquery »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #372
oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A few are and understand that most of the time your are defending scoundrels. But there is a sizeable and probable larger group that very easily wants to suppress speech they do not like. There never was a case where to much freedom of speech has been a significant problem, contrary to the other way around. Next is misinformation and tomorrow you wonder why you cannot state your opinion anymore. A cycle that has been…

Do you get mad at google for automatically detecting and removing spam from your email inbox? For a lot of people, probably the majority, speech by scoundrels falls somewhere in that realm... there is simply no debate to be had about the basic humanity of certain classes of people. Capitalistic companies respond to this demand.

That said, I agree the government probably shouldn't be involved here for the most part (slippery slope, government is a blunt tool, etc.). As long as your "speech" isn't actually harming someone (harassment, revenge porn, incitement, etc.)

As long as we're defending scoundrels it's worth remembering we already lack so many protections for non-scoundrels. In a lot of states you can be fired if your boss hears a whiff of collective bargaining. But I digress.

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

#379

Post by DamonHD »

rhaksw wrote: post #376
DamonHD wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you view the rest of typical SPAM filtering, where the mail is apparently accepted for delivery but then silently thrown away? For simplicity assume a system such as mine where I control the MTA and client, so no one is making decisions hidden from me as the end user who wants to get the ham and see no SPAM. (I get tens of ham per day and many many thousands of SPAM attempts.)

With spam email, the recipient has a chance to recover the mail by looking in their spam folder. No such spam folder is provided to the public on social media.

Note that in the GreetPause case the SPAMmer will not see the rejection errors since they don't look at the response to their hit and run (ie no one gets to see any error, neither sender nor target), and a legitimate sender should never get the error, so even this may be messy by your criteria I think!

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

#380

Post by semi-extrinsic »

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…

> Restricting speech is always in the interests of those that have the power to shape discussions, so limiting speech is always counter productive.

This is not true. Restricting hate speech is an obvious counterexample.

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