> Pedophiles were showing up on FSE. That seems to be a problem with the Fediverse in general. And admittedly, Discord.
Or Signal. Or Telegram.
FSE meets the FBI
131–140 of 159 posts
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#132FBI paying a front group (BoardReader?) to collect open source intelligence isn't too weird, doesn't sound like a crime. And I'm happy the FBI spent resources going after "swatting".
I'd really like to know how the front group are controlling Facebook servers to collect data.
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Their users acted like assholes, their admins did nothing about it, so I decided I didn’t want to talk to them anymore. It has been my experience that the more vocal someone is about free speech rights the more likely it is that they are only vocal because they want to use those rights as a shield against criticism of their bigoted, annoying, or anti-social behavior and they want to criticize people for distancing t…
That's been my observation. "Freedom to... say what exactly?" I'm A-OK with people saying constructive, civil things I disagree with. I might reply with my disagreement but that's OK. We're talking! I have zero patience with someone jumping in with trolling, harassment, or other abuse.
> Freedom to... say what exactly?
What's the difference between this and saying "Criminals want trials with defence lawyers, so people who want trials with defence lawyers are criminals"?
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
Diverse conversations are actually pretty rare in reality when conflicting opinions exist. The paradox of tolerance pretty much demands you weed out the extremists or they will be all that's left.
> Diverse conversations are actually pretty rare in reality when conflicting opinions exist So are we just not supposed to debate anything ever? Just find a convenient excuse to ban/block/mute and move on? > The paradox of tolerance pretty much demands you weed out the extremists or they will be all that's left Too bad everyone has a different idea of who an "extremist" is, and conveniently ignores the ones on their…
Sigh....
Does HN have diverse opinions?
Some say yes, others will say no. It depends on the topic.
Now the moment you start acting like a jerk on HN you'll get a message from Dang or one of the other mods, and if you keep it up you'll be banned.
Diverse opinions are fine. The problem is there are a lot of people that get way too wound up in the rightness of their opinion, and there are others that are just trolls that live on the conflict. When you start banning the trolls/extremists they go off and make articles like "Site X bans any difference of opinion because they are big meanies" Then other groups like free speech extremists show up to complain about how the site is authoritarian in the most annoying and offensive ways possible, and it's not long after that admins block entire topics to make the problem FOAGA.
Being an admin/moderator of places where people can post will quickly drain you of understanding and compassion. The frog and the scorpion is a good fable here. You get tired of the scorpions asking for a ride then stabbing you in the back on your forums.
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you think of a forum that isn't tiny that does not do this kind of moderation that isn't a cesspool? Your theory seems sound, but I don't know if I have ever seen it implemented such that the theory is correct.
I believe HN does it pretty well.
HN weeds out/flags a massive number of topics very quickly. Especially political topics that lead to flame wars. It also weeds out the unnecessarily argumentative posters pretty quickly.
But at the same time because of this there are some that say that this limits conversations and topics that can be discussed on HN. So, no you can't make everyone happy, but you can attempt to at least make the atmosphere pleasant.
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
I run a medium sized Mastodon server. I blocked them because one of their users called me the n-word, I reported them to their admin, and nothing happened. It had zero to do with fediblock or any other communal mechanism. Their users acted like assholes, their admins did nothing about it, so I decided I didn’t want to talk to them anymore. The notion of FSE whining about being blocked by some cabal is hilarious to me…
>Their users acted like assholes, their admins did nothing about it, so I decided I didn’t want to talk to them anymore. It has been my experience that the more vocal someone is about free speech rights the more likely it is that they are only vocal because they want to use those rights as a shield against criticism of their bigoted, annoying, or anti-social behavior and they want to criticize people for distancing t…
There is a well known effect that goes by many names that anything taken to its extreme becomes its opposite.
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#137Wasn't there a better technical way to block the scraper? Like blocking IPs/domains at ingress instead of serving requests? Probably you do still pay for request traffic though...
Isn't there a market for anti-DDOS third-party services for API endpoints (Cloudflare etc) — through probably for "Free Speech Extremist" that wouldn't be suitable solution, and there are charges too (though presumably when facing a situation like this you actually save money).
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#138Wasn't there a better technical way to block the scraper? Like blocking IPs/domains at ingress instead of serving requests? Probably you do still pay for request traffic though... Isn't there a market for anti-DDOS third-party services for API endpoints (Cloudflare etc) — through probably for "Free Speech Extremist" that wouldn't be suitable solution, and there are charges too (though presumably when facing a situati…
> So, I tell the server to drop traffic from the IPs that were scraping. Problem solved! Then immediately I start seeing a large number of attempts from different IPs. Residential IPs in the US: they're buying residential proxies.
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That would actually solve the problem, but that the cost of having to operate that setup. So you expect someone else to incur that cost and not exercise control over how their resources are used, so you can use it for free/low effort?
Valid concern... but my conclusion from that is that the Fediverse is just a bunch of personal lawns you'd better stay away from.
I mean, yeah, that's the whole point of the Fediverse. It makes explicit that internet spaces are just sets of lawns.
Re: FSE meets the FBI
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a completely accurate description of that screenshot IMO. Even if the guy who posted it was making phone calls to get thugs to beat people up and hoping they'd take it further, that post is still clearly absurd, an obvious joke, not a credible threat. This is "96% of serial killers have used bread" stuff.
But it was never a joke! It was a guy basically running harassment enterprise, including swatting people and other false flag style crimes. He wasn't being silly or lampooning anything or creating satire, he was trying to make conversation worse. That's not a joke.
> But it was never a joke!
It was blatantly a joke. The article even gives us the context that it was part of the guy deliberately getting himself banned from that instance.
> It was a guy basically running harassment enterprise, including swatting people and other false flag style crimes.
Sure, maybe (if it even was that guy and not some random unrelated joker). But even people doing that can also still joke.
> He wasn't being silly or lampooning anything or creating satire
He absolutely was. "I will leave my fingerprints and DNA behind so they can catch me"? That's really funny.