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X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

disruptionist.com

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Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#761

Post by martin-t »

error_logic wrote: post #694
martin-t wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you point out, "honest mistake" can be used by sophisticated intentional aggressors to get away with their attacks. For a long time, the advice was "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." but aggressors evolve to fit their surroundings. When the population largely follows this rule, it becomes a competitive advantage to fake incompetence. Perhaps both malice and incompetence sh…

This ties in with something that took me far too long to recognize: Trust has two pillars. One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence. These are the same issues faced by AI development, as well as representative government, or anything regulating a dynamic with competing elements or agents. Yet our plurality voting system would be insufficient even to keep a car on the roa…

> One pillar is alignment of values, and therefore intent. The other pillar is competence.

That's a good point.

> If we voted with {+1, +0.5, -0.5, 0, 0, 0...} weights, without duplication of non-zero values

Are you describing range/score voting?

I don't think avoiding duplicated values is necessary but it's pretty well known that score voting is the best system: https://rangevoting.org/

See the diagram at the bottom of the page describing voter regrets. Everybody at least somewhat interested in voting systems would prefer this, especially over plurality/FPTP which is the stupidest system possible. But a lot of people are clueless or willingly supporting a broken system.

There's also an explorable explanation by Nicky Case: https://ncase.me/ballot/

Sidenote: the fact you need to explain that expressing more information in one vote is still one vote shows how clueless people are. Obviously every vote has the same power to influence the result but some people will try to wear you down through misunderstood technicalities.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#762

Post by Y_Y »

alt227 wrote: post #653
Y_Y wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they pick up a gun and shoot at me then that becomes illegal While I appreciate your free speech maximalism, I can't help but feel you're shutting the door after the horse has bolted. My feeling is that someone should be allowed to say that they hate me, and that they'd like to kill me. All the same, if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it. I'm fact I'm glad tha…

I really like your opinion, thanks for the thoughtful comment. I agree with what you are saying. > if I think they'll actually attempt to do so then I'm ok with the law trying to prevent it. This is the sticky issue which nobody is able to solve though. How do you prove someone will actually attemt to do it? Currently the legal system requires more than them just saying it to prosecute. There needs to be more motive,…

I don't have a good idea for how to determine whether a threat is sincere or not, or whether or not either party believes it to be so.

On the other hand, it may not be necessary. When I say the law can try to prevent my murder, I don't necessarily mean to deprive my would-be murder of liberty or privacy (since those should be protected in the absence of proven guilt). If you put the prevention on the other side, and offer e.g. a police escort or enforced blocks on communication media then maybe you can discourage/prevent my murder without answering difficult questions like intent.

You might well say, "I shouldn't have to do any of that, they should have to not murder", or "that's all fine but who's going to pay". I have a most marvellous answer to those, but is comment is too small to contain it.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#763

Post by Y_Y »

pegasus wrote: post #372
_heimdall wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your logic here is circular. You're arguing definitions, it doesn't make sense to point to examples of places that claim to have free speech and decide that free speech must have limits because those places said they have it and they have limits. You could just as easily look at those places and say they must not actually have free speech because they have legal limits on what you say.

Sure, you could easily say that, but it would be a pretty silly thing to say. The world is not black and white, as much as we'd like it to be sometimes.

It's ok as long as you don't want the world to be black xor white.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#764

Post by guappa »

cowboylowrez wrote: post #482
guappa wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Italy even saying "stop genocide" without further elaboration on state tv is enough to get the Israelian ambassador to call the prime minister. https://www.ilfattoquotidiano.it/2024/02/14/travaglio-a-la7-...

yeah but thats like saying I as an american have to be personally responsible for trump's behavior

That's completely different. People criticise trump without being accused of wanting to exterminate the entire population of the USA.

But if you criticise israel, that's the standard answer you get.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#765

Post by pindab0ter »

tremon wrote: post #671
pindab0ter wrote: post #593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the useSkin parameter something you manually added? I am not logged in and when I navigate to another page the parameter (and with it the skin preference) disappears.

Oh sorry, yes I have a browser extension that always adds that parameter to any wikipedia page. I usually strip it when posting a link, but I forgot (and since it's a long link, it doesn't display in its entirety so I didn't catch it).

That makes sense! I can see why you would prefer that skin. Out of curiosity, why use a plugin and not Wikipedia's appearance preferences[1]?

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Preferences#mw-prefsec...

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#766

Post by pindab0ter »

matthberg wrote: post #757
tremon wrote: post #671

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sorry, yes I have a browser extension that always adds that parameter to any wikipedia page. I usually strip it when posting a link, but I forgot (and since it's a long link, it doesn't display in its entirety so I didn't catch it).

I just discovered that feature due to your mistake, so thank you! For similarly newly enlightened people it's a feature of MediaWiki (which Wikipedia runs on) and there are five (plus two) themes selectable with ?useskin= values: - timeless (as seen above): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=timeles... - monobook (default 2004-2009): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Skin?useskin=monoboo... -…

You can also choose a preferred skin when you log in and go to Preferences → Appearance.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#767

Post by flanked-evergl »

rsynnott wrote: post #380
flanked-evergl wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that was the case, that would definitely mean he is not a state actor, which is defined as «An entity that is a part of, or which operates licitly or semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency.». The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans.

> operates [..] semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency Hard to see how he doesn't fit this criteria? That DOGE thing is clearly a US government agency of some sort. > The only way you can claim he is a state actor if you think he acts, in his management of X, on behalf of the US state, a claim which would be entirely laughable even to partisans. If you take the Louis XIV "I am the state" approac…

Your claim was «He is de facto if not de jure more or less in charge of the US government.». If this is true, the opposite, i.e. «operates [..] semi-licitly on behalf or in service of, a government agency» can't be true. Cold reason decrees it from her awful throne. Talk as much fatalism about that fact as you please: it really must be.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#768

Post by 6510 »

mike_hearn wrote: post #658
saghm wrote: post #612

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans aren’t in the loop for automated bans. My point is that this _shouldn't_ have been purely automated, but having fewer people to review things forces more things to be automated.

Well, I worked on abuse for a few years and gave a tech talk on it at Twitter. You really do want these things to be fully automated for two reasons. The first is that spammers automate so if you don't then they're always much faster. By the time your humans are paying attention and have made a decision it's too late, all the spam (scams, frauds, malware sites...) was already delivered. In the next spam run everythin…

The trick I imagine is to categorize users by how established they are then block links by domain and user level. Sometimes spammers will mature accounts first but it is considerably more work. Creating a lot of fresh accounts is much easier.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#769

Post by intended »

guappa wrote: post #750
intended wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess.. it must be shocking to you? Seemingly absurd perhaps. You can't say what you want in a shopping mall. They can decide who gets to stay in their premises, and for whatever reason they can eject you. All the free speech cases, have been about government stopping speech. Whether its about deceny laws, or sedition - its always been the government vs a person / corporation. So yeah - these have been the rights y…

> That is the operating definition of free speech that has worked in America since I started working in this space. It hasn't worked. But you're too set in "USA IS PERFECT!" mindset to objectively think about it.

Oh. I come from and am In a country with much stricter Free Speech laws.

I think all of them are pretty crap for today’s environment.

But yes - the operating definition of Free speech, the one enforceable in courts, the one you have lived under, is the one I outlined.

Namely - no government over reach in speech. Not that people can’t do what they want as private individuals, and now corporations.

So you can in theory, have a corporation buy up all the local news channels, and then have them share one kind of point of view. It’s perfectly free speech.

You could stream porn, and the courts would side by you for your right to free speech.

This doesn’t mean you wont get sued for piracy, or actually earn money through your project - you still need a service people want.

I’m dead serious, you can check if you like - but these are the rules you live under even right now.

Re: X users are unable to post “Signal.me” links

#770

Post by intended »

alt227 wrote: post #717
intended wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, let me summarize. Your position: >Your position: >… t and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers. Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens united. Firms have a right to do what they please, as long as it…

Fair enough. > You want to make them behave a certain way. You are asking the government to force them to do so. Im actually not doing that. I dont know where I gave you that impression but I do not believe the government should force any company to allow full free speech on their commercial platform. > Your position ignores the rights given to firms to run their business, and the choice of their speech via citizens…

Ok. Sure, so I think my error was based on my over extrapolation from this:

>people here that gatekeepers (companies) should have the power to decide that and 'protect' their audience from it. That IMO is anti free speech, as the 'protect' part of the term is abiguous/subjective and depends on the beliefs/opinions of the gatekeepers.

Gatekeeping would be a right of platforms and I assumed that combating it would involve forcing them to behave in accordance with an external force.

And Since you are discussing only twitter, it does follow that Twitter has an anti-speech position, despite their stated intentions.

——-

For a bit more fun, I think what X was proclaiming is the naive version of free speech. The kind of “anyone can make this app” naive over generalization.

I have a mechanism which allows me to balance the needs of moderation and censorship with free speech. Its an interesting exercise, I think you might like working through it.

From personal experience - I have had to ban people, and it was a form of censorship. Resolving this contradiction effectively changed my career path.

So I have a 1000 users on my forum. One user is incredibly active, and spends their time abusing a specific local minority group.

Things like X minority needs to die, not arguing in good faith.

Now, ideally I shouldn’t ban him, and let counter speech do its things. But since they aren’t arguing in good faith, counter speech doesn’t work.

Over time, this is also creating second order effects in other conversations.

It’s attracting a new kind of user, its driving conversations to be more polarized, and its reducing time spent on longer more thoughtful posts.

How would you respond, and why?

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