[HN Gopher] Tweeting "Memphis" autolocks your Twitter account
___________________________________________________________________
Tweeting "Memphis" autolocks your Twitter account
Author : hirsin
Score : 382 points
Date : 2021-03-14 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| w_for_wumbo wrote:
| I'm kinda surprised there isn't already a viral baiting tweet for
| this already.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Works as intended?
|
| I wonder if this is due to Memphis' association with racism, and
| it is an artifact of them trying to shut down the conversation
| about it becoming too overt by accident, instead of sneaky
| shadowbans, de-trending, and throttling.
| sayhar wrote:
| You're saying that twitter employees have a nefarious plan to
| ... throttle conversations about the american south?
| baybal2 wrote:
| Maybe not nefarious, just inept.
|
| You don't get censored on Chinese social media for discussing
| Xi Jinping's conduct in good, or bad light, it get censored
| for just discussing it.
|
| Most censors don't give a fuck evaluating what they are told
| to censor, they just ctrl+f click click...
|
| I don't doubt the attitude is shared across the pacific in
| the tech industry.
| riffic wrote:
| no, there is no valid reason for this. Someone shipped
| something bad into production and hasn't rolled it back yet.
| yakk0 wrote:
| As a fan of the University of Memphis basketball team, this is
| not the weekend I'd like this to happen. Though with how our
| weekend is going maybe it's a good thing...
| yokoprime wrote:
| Oh boy, the dumpster fire that just keeps on giving. I really
| hope Twitter does have audit trail on everyone being locked by
| this so they easily can unlock everyone again
| [deleted]
| beckingz wrote:
| And now we'll have the suspension on our record so future
| suspensions will be more severe.
|
| Automated moderation in action!
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| Random thought of mine was companies use AI to moderate. But
| potentially malefactors can train the AI to flag harmless
| stuff. And because of the opaque nature of neural networks
| there isn't good mechanism to undo it, except by reverting.
| pixl97 wrote:
| The 4chan syndrome. Make common words into racist
| dogwhistles.
| bombcar wrote:
| They didn't kill Microsoft's Tay - they made her auto mod.
| SN76477 wrote:
| Sure enough. Wow
| Disgardia wrote:
| Unrelated but, how to unsuspend my account, my account got
| suspended maybe because it got detected as spam because I'm doing
| some retweet tasks
| sneak wrote:
| At what point does it stop being reasonable to donate free
| content that attracts eyeballs to web hosts addicted to
| censorship?
|
| I left Twitter after a dozen years and many thousands of
| followers. You can, too.
|
| Tweeting _anything_ gets you closer to the day Twitter locks your
| account and destroys all you 've built.
|
| You won't even be able to view your follower or following lists
| at that point (and they're not in your data export), or any of
| the DMs you've sent or received over all those years.
| Traster wrote:
| I love the sheer number of hacker news commenters saying "Well I
| tried it, seems to work". At what level do you guys go "I'm just
| going to assume those 10 other guys aren't lying"
| arc-in-space wrote:
| Hey, it's hilarious. It's too tempting not to join the banned
| people party.
| croes wrote:
| "Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created
| the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them
| the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
| dragonwriter wrote:
| That's simply not true, evangelization is hard and requires
| connection to personal experience much more the convincing
| people of wet paint does, and it requires connecting it to
| personal experience for which people haven't already accepted
| a better explanation, which is a lot harder than with "the
| paint is wet". You don't just tell people "God exists" and
| they're like "Oh, sure, thanks." (Well, except perhaps
| sarcastically.)
|
| It's a cute quote, but it has nothing to do with reality.
| vmception wrote:
| correct and that's why you have to change the rules to be
| more amenable to it, such as
|
| "telepathically wish for a vague outcome and retroactively
| ascribe something to that wish and validate your beliefs"
|
| more powerful than you might think
| croes wrote:
| Yes you do, that's how children get indoctrinated.
| [deleted]
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Yup. Getting someone to switch their religion is just
| changing a final link in the long, _long_ chain of beliefs,
| most of which was created thousands of years ago, and which
| almost everyone internalizes in their formative years.
|
| The belief in "invisible men in the sky" is older than
| human civilization. Even getting an atheist to convert to a
| religion is _just_ a matter of convincing them about a
| bunch of details about a particular invisible man in the
| sky, and that they should pay attention to them. The
| majority of the work - convincing them that the very idea
| of an invisible man in the sky is something one can believe
| in - was already done by that person 's family, all of whom
| had it done to them by their families, all the way back to
| neolithic.
| wait_a_minute wrote:
| Those are not comparable
| jchw wrote:
| Getting blocked from using Twitter is a productivity hack :)
| cbozeman wrote:
| Deleting your Twitter account is an even better one.
| yokoprime wrote:
| I just had to make a throwaway to test it out, so no biggie.
|
| But admit I tricked a twitter friend into answering what the
| full title of "walking in ..." was
| Frost1x wrote:
| Any easy testable critical claim should be tested. Science in
| action IMO. Nothing like empirical data collection.
|
| At some point you may find a data point that deviates and
| doesnt lock the account and might be able to reason how/why it
| happened. If nothing else you can at least quickly verify with
| high confidence and not just take a small conesus' word.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| It's called peer review ;-)
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > At what level do you guys go "I'm just going to assume those
| 10 other guys aren't lying"
|
| For something easily testable? Never.
|
| Edit: Account just got locked, lol.
| alexvoda wrote:
| I am actually pondering if I should do this to lock my
| account.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| You get it back in 12 hours, so it is not a big deal.
| PastaMonster wrote:
| If you break the twitters infinitely vague rules 5 times
| your account will get banned permanently. So it is a big
| deal.
|
| Anyone interested in testing the 5 times limit by using
| the Memphis?
| oe wrote:
| Exactly this. I'm also afraid that it sets a flag
| somewhere that "this person has been banned at some
| point" which will affect _something_ down the line.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| This claim requires testing.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| Post a link to the right Marc Cohn song and you'll be
| banned for a good month! </j>
| alpaca128 wrote:
| Me too. Also I decided to repeal the ban with the comment
| "Memphis" just for giggles. I visit Twitter maybe once a
| month(when an interesting link pops up here), so it's not
| like I absolutely need that account.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I think I should put up a lever that gives people an electric
| shock, charge admission, and set up a live stream.
|
| I bet the lever will be popular.
| monkeybutton wrote:
| I can imagine the reaction video tiktoks already!
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Definitely will be, with the people of a more scientific
| mindset :).
|
| https://xkcd.com/242/
| jackson1442 wrote:
| I did it too.... I saw someone post about it in my TL and
| promptly tweeted.
| thaumaturgy wrote:
| This is neat to look at from a psychological perspective. I bet
| there's a pretty good correlation between the people who see
| everyone else go, "yep, works as reported" and decides to try
| it for themselves anyway, and people who aren't easily
| convinced by research or science in other subjects.
| mikem170 wrote:
| To be fair, that correlation would probably cut both ways.
| For example, the people who don't decide to try things for
| themselves being more susceptible to being swayed by
| propaganda.
|
| Interesting to look at, as you said. I assume that different
| personality types evolved because that made us more robust as
| a species.
| jjgreen wrote:
| That big block of ice -- don't lick it or your tongue will
| stick to it ...
| _Microft wrote:
| I wonder if that happens every time. ;)
|
| https://xkcd.com/242/
|
| Edit: oh noes, folks - this was an innocuous compliment on your
| adventurousness! :)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| that's actually consistent with a hacker attitude
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Whenever there is a bug, half the time the next question is
| "how do I replicate it?"
| kingkawn wrote:
| I tried it...seems to work
| mindfulplay wrote:
| This is the same level of expert AI that is being put to use in
| self driving cars (eg Tesla) and other critical faculty things.
|
| I hope the ethical AI people pursue these foundational issues in
| these AI ML thingamajiks.
| tyingq wrote:
| Similar, there's many short names you can add to a comment in a
| paypal payment that will get your paypal locked down. "CIMEX" is
| a good example. Thanks OFAC!
| jcpham2 wrote:
| What is this Twitter you speak of
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| The proper syntax: 'What is this Twitter of which you speak?'
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| What type of dog is that?
| Shivetya wrote:
| Going to assume its a keyword flagged because of protests from
| last year?
| riffic wrote:
| Twitter has increasingly slid into user-hostile territory. I
| moderate /r/Twitter on reddit and we have a pinned thread just
| showing nothing but complaint after complaint, because content
| moderation is a failure when you attempt to scale it.
|
| We'd like to get Twitter Comms to address it at some point, but
| the company is opaque. It's just nuts.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Content moderation is trivially easy when your users pay for it
| or have skin in the game. Making accounts paid would
| immediately fix the problem as few people would want to risk
| losing real money.
|
| Content moderation only becomes a problem where your business
| model is "growth and engagement" and your revenue _depends_ on
| your users generating as much content as possible.
| deadmutex wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: I am not sure if I come to the the same
| conclusion (that Twitter is user-hostile). Even if you see
| "complaint after complaint". It could be actually true that the
| complaint ratio is going down, because the # of users or
| engagement is actually growing. I am not saying I know the
| rate, but I don't think we can rule that possibility out.
|
| As a thought exercise, if you assume there is 1% chance of
| someone complaining about something that went wrong with their
| account. And there is a billion users using that service. You
| will have to have a _super_ high accuracy to not end up in a
| world where there isn 't a dozen+ people being affected each
| month. I believe that Twitter (and other services) actually do
| try very hard to avoid this, but it is a very hard problem.
|
| To this, some HN users believe that they just should have say
| 100k+ humans moderating everything, but it is very hard to have
| 100K humans consistently moderate and not introduce biases.
| riffic wrote:
| I come to the conclusion that Twitter is user-hostile based
| not on complaints but rather by details mentioned in this
| post (user suspensions in response to posting 'memphis' in a
| tweet.) It doesn't take much else to make this determination.
|
| I will note that your thought exercise is a statment, least
| in part, of Masnick's Impossibility Theorem (Content
| Moderation At Scale Is Impossible To Do Well):
|
| - Any moderation policy will anger someone
|
| - Content moderation is inherently subjective
|
| - Errors at scale result in many errors over time
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20191111/23032743367/masni.
| ..
| a1369209993 wrote:
| It's not matter of scale; it is entirely unacceptable to ban
| users purely because they made a post containing a particular
| word[0], regardless of the circumstances and regardless of
| the rate[1].
|
| 0: and yes, that does in fact include words like "nigger" or
| "cunt", as this post (which contains those words)
| demonstrates.
|
| 1: Mumble mumble cosmic ray bitflips if you want to be
| pedantic, but I dispute the "because" on that one.
| dgellow wrote:
| Just a small anecdote: I created a company account, then set
| the birthday to ~1 year ago, when the company was registered.
| Everything was fine for 5 minutes, then my account has been
| blocked with a notification telling me that I need to be at
| least 13 years old to use Twitter. I can still login but cannot
| access the settings to change the birthday (or just remove it)
| as a screen "fix your age or prove your identity" is blocking
| me from doing anything. I used their support form to send a
| proof of ID a few times but the account gets blocked again
| every time.
|
| Somehow twitter believes that 1 years old are trying to join
| their platform. That was more than 6 months ago, and still no
| solution -\\_(tsu)_/-
| riffic wrote:
| What shocks me is there is no _warning_ that setting a date
| of birth is a dangerous action.
|
| The company is just hostile to its users.
| drstewart wrote:
| This likely has nothing to do with hostility and everything
| to do with regulation, specifically COPPA:
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/business-
| center/guidance/com...
|
| >7. I have a "mixed audience" app and would like to age
| screen my users. Are there specific requirements for the
| age screen?
|
| >An example of a neutral age screen would be a system that
| allows a user freely to enter the month and year of birth.
| Avoid encouraging children to falsify age information by,
| for example, stating that certain features will not be
| available to users under age 13.
| aaronmdjones wrote:
| I lost my Discord account for daring to use the "change
| your e-mail address" feature. Nothing warned me that this
| was a potentially-destructive action. It happens.
| Marsymars wrote:
| A year or two ago I went through _every_ online account I
| have to change the email address.
|
| I should have kept a record of results. Some were good
| and easy. Some had no option other than an account
| closure. Some involved a single contact of support
| without any real verification that I was actually the
| account holder. Some involved a protracted string of
| contact with support that tried to claim I was asking for
| an impossibility. Some services kept my old email on file
| and I periodically receive something to my old address.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Most hilarious one related to the 13yo boobytrap was that
| they lock you out if your date of registration predates your
| 13th birthday, regardless of how long ago it was.
|
| Like, if you were younger than 13 at some point, and you
| didn't prove yourself that you're no longer 13, it can't be
| ruled out that you potentially haven't aged since, by Twitter
| logic.
|
| Seen through survivorship bias it's obvious that you may
| never set DoB for any of your accounts, but ... I guess
| Twitter is kind of weird one from what SNS is generally
| understood to be.
| judge2020 wrote:
| > Like, if you were younger than 13 at some point, and you
| didn't prove yourself that you're no longer 13, it can't be
| ruled out that you potentially haven't aged since, by
| Twitter logic.
|
| No, that's due to the fact that they don't want to store
| any data about yourself from when you were under 13 years
| old. I had this happen to me when I changed my account age
| and it said it had to delete all tweets (amongst other
| info) from when I was <13 and my profile was wiped (bio,
| profile pic, website link), likely because they don't
| timestamp profile changes in their DB (some audit log
| probably has it though).
|
| https://help.twitter.com/en/managing-your-account/account-
| re...
| LegitShady wrote:
| I created a regular account. I followed a handful of people.
| Not long after (same day I think) it said they thought I was
| a bot and could I scan my ID and email it to them to verify I
| was a human.
|
| I couldn't even log into the account to delete it without
| providing them a photo of my ID, so I said fuck that and
| never thought about it ever again.
| withinboredom wrote:
| The funny part is, your account was probably recorded as a
| "bot" account in that team's success metrics.
| 1f60c wrote:
| I (foolishly) took people at their word, thinking the bug had
| been fixed.
|
| It has not.
| sabujp wrote:
| nice, it worked
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| So, we can seem how Twitter's censoring works now, start at a
| word that's only associated with Memphis, then draw gradually
| closer. Alternative spellings, alternative utf-8 lookalikes,
| alternative characters (leet speak, etc.). Usually if a company
| blocks words they do common substitutes too like: memph1s,
| m3mfis, ... do they block rot13(), how about [?]e[?]phis,
| 3[?]ph15??
| yodelshady wrote:
| Either the ban is over or utf-8 lookalikes are fine.
| aqme28 wrote:
| I am now enjoying my 12 hour enforced break from Twitter.
| optimalsolver wrote:
| On Hacker News?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Not on an alt account?
| [deleted]
| dgellow wrote:
| So, Twitter now has a no procrastination feature? :)
| FeteCommuniste wrote:
| I tried it and was locked for violating the rule against posting
| people's "personal information." I just appealed the account
| lock...
| [deleted]
| kjrose wrote:
| This is pretty much the issues we are seeing more and more with
| centralized systems relying on automated systems for moderation
| with no method of appeal.
|
| I'd bet 90% of google accounts banned fall under something like
| this. And since there is no appeal, that means if you end up
| banned/peanlized/etc and you aren't rich/influential then you are
| screwed by a kafkaesque hell.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| damn ,what a time to start submitted OP
|
| (damnit, bots dropping like flies all over)
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Most of you tweeted that to see if the autolock works. Sounds
| like a you problem to me.
| dang wrote:
| Please don't post unsubstantive and/or flamebait comments to
| HN.
|
| We detached this subthread from
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26458641.
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Sure. But to be honest, I thought it was substantative,
| because "Sounds like a you problem" is a possible response
| from AI moderation. I know that it's not OK, but it does
| happen.
| maxrev17 wrote:
| Can you explain that one? Lol
| NullPrefix wrote:
| Pure cynicism, but still... Most of the posters were
| expecting to be autolocked. Can't pretend to be suprised now,
| can they?
| iljya wrote:
| Oh, so this isn't about Twitter censoring disgruntled FedEx
| customers? ;)
| surfer7837 wrote:
| I'm now enjoying a 12 hour ban from Twitter
| C19is20 wrote:
| I took the lifetime option and couldn't even be arsed signing
| up. Win for me as I can still Memphis.
| delecti wrote:
| Does it only happen if you tweet the word by itself, or even in
| context?
|
| I actually enjoy Twitter so I'm not willing to test myself. :P
| sp332 wrote:
| This is the only screenshot I have seen so far.
| https://mobile.twitter.com/textfiles/status/1371196727215144...
| delecti wrote:
| Weird, even in a perfectly reasonable context.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I wonder how this was discovered in the first place.
| smitty1e wrote:
| I got away with the subtexual play:
|
| Maybe Everthing Merely Projects Hellish, Inimical Sophistry
| poundofshrimp wrote:
| I wonder what is wrong with the idea of letting users select the
| moderation algorithm for their feed? Is anyone working on this?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Cancel Culture 2.0: entire cities purged ;)
| trhway wrote:
| May be the Sodom and Gomorrah were just a similar automated
| system error, and the story that we know is just a spin by the
| heaven's PR department in the aftermath of the mistake.
|
| Also jives nicely with another topic - automated drones - at
| the top of HN today. Giving that Twitter with all its money has
| probably an AI among the best and still makes such a gaping
| errors...
| LegitShady wrote:
| >May be the Sodom and Gomorrah were just a similar automated
| system error,
|
| They were clearly related to the salt mine meme
| that_guy_iain wrote:
| I wonder if they'll unlock everyone when they release the fix. I
| kind of doubt they will.
| einarvollset wrote:
| I'm still banned
| riffic wrote:
| haha yeah right. after watching Twitter, Inc after all these
| years there's nothing left but to be cynical if they'll _do the
| right thing_.
| tedunangst wrote:
| Users: social media is too addictive.
|
| Twitter: we're testing out a new safe word feature to address
| that.
|
| They should keep this. Randomly pick a new word each day, anybody
| who says it gets locked for a day.
| ronsor wrote:
| Eventually everyone will get locked, and Twitter will be a much
| better place by virtue of having no users.
| drusepth wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see Twitter adopt the old "Robot 9000"
| automod rules, where every tweet would have to be unique from
| all previous tweets system-wide or else you get a temporary
| ban that exponentially grows in length after every
| infraction.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Are you referring to /r9k/ ?
|
| There are only 10 pages visible on 4chan, did that rule
| only apply to visible content or all past content aswell?
| drusepth wrote:
| /r9k/ was actually modeled after Randall Munroe's open-
| source "Robot9000" automod bot for one of XKCD's IRC
| channels (where unoriginal users would be muted for N
| time, rather than banned).
|
| The original post explaining it is here [1]. I'm not sure
| whether the 4chan implementation applied to just the 10
| visible pages or all past comments.
|
| Fun fact: Twitch also has an r9k mode for chat [2] (that
| scopes "unique messages" per-chat over a 10-minute
| rolling window).
|
| [1] https://blog.xkcd.com/2008/01/14/robot9000-and-xkcd-
| signal-a...
|
| [2] https://twitter.com/twitchsupport/status/382923694864
| 994304?...
| [deleted]
| reaperducer wrote:
| _Randomly pick a new word each day, anybody who says it gets
| locked for a day._
|
| Didn't Pee Wee Herman do something like that?
| anonu wrote:
| Can the word appear in a phrase and lock the account?
| yokoprime wrote:
| yes. being verified does seem to help not automatically lock
| your account
|
| https://twitter.com/okmsprime/status/1371189816289857538?s=2...
| SteveNuts wrote:
| grep has finally become sentient
| MikeDelta wrote:
| Just once? Not even three times and then it comes, like the
| Candyman or the Babadook?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| It's Zalgo without the text corruption
| mgamache wrote:
| "We've temporarily limited some of your account features" Jesus
| how stupid...
| yuliyp wrote:
| Sounds like a strange text clustering false positive.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Apparently not everyone who tweets it gets their account locked.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Twitter ha a bunch of stupid, arbitrary rules. If you make a
| tweet comment that violates twitter's rules and are forced to
| verify your phone, all future tweets will be demoted to the
| bottom of comments where few people will see them. This is
| permanent and no way to ever fix it.
| hyperpape wrote:
| Reminded of Rachel's post about requiring confirmation for
| exceptionally destructive actions
| (https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2020/10/26/num/).
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| I don't know how this relates to the twitter thingy, but it was
| a useful read, thanks!
|
| A relevant tag: #devops
| [deleted]
| risho wrote:
| Yeah that definitely seems like a mistake. I tried it and it
| worked. I'm going to appeal it and see what happens. This must
| just be one of the algorithms going haywire or something.
| aneutron wrote:
| Someone in the thread suggested a more probable (somewhat
| substantiated) reasoning: They got banned for "revealing
| private information". OP is thinking that someone at twitter
| tried banning publishing some address in Memphis, but somewhat
| it got tokenized (?) and so Memphis is now blocked.
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> This must just be one of the algorithms going haywire or
| something._
|
| That or maybe some random test code from development that got
| pushed into production by a series of accidents like a senior
| clicking Approve on the pull request of an intern without
| actually reviewing the code. Just a guess.
| w0mbat wrote:
| Regular expressions are hard. Let's go shopping.
| ve55 wrote:
| In general it seems like moderating platforms with
| millions/billions of users is a fool's errand, but is required to
| be attempted due to the level of centralization we've ended up
| with.
|
| Regardless of how much of it is automated away via blackbox ML
| algorithms lacking transparency or via outsourcing to cheap labor
| that spends their days looking at terribly offensive and shocking
| content, the end result is going to have countless false
| positives, a difficult (if even possible) path for users to
| appeal, and a largely discontent userbase that constantly feels
| wronged from multiple angles.
|
| Having millions of people with thousands of cultures, hundreds of
| languages, and countless niche styles of communication all be
| moderated by the same group of people (or the same algorithms)
| just isn't a good idea, and I hope that in the long-term we can
| find ways for communities to self-moderate in more decentralized
| manners to help improve this.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| Penistone and Scunthorpe and now Memphis.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcZdwX4noCE
|
| As much as I dislike Twitter (I only really use it for work
| reasons) they are in a no win situation. They either moderate
| what people post with a flawed system that will never be 100%
| or be hounded by the "Why won't anyone think of the children"
| group.
| edoceo wrote:
| No win? With hella bank roll and their engineering staff? BS.
|
| They've got a path forward but their management needs to see
| a new model - and they are not innovators/disruptors anymore.
| Prognosis: twitter will rot more for next 2-5 years and
| management won't notice till the ticker is affected. It will
| take a bit for consumer sentiment to reflect. Then we'll see
| a new CEO, some shake-up and grand announcement. I hope in
| that time tho a new challenger emerges.
| Crosseye_Jack wrote:
| Look at YouTube and the multiple adpocalypses as an
| example. They have a massive bank roll and engineering
| staff but still fall foul of journos writing a story about
| "look at this content next to X's advert. We reached out to
| X for their take."
|
| which leads to a tanking of CPM, creators getting
| demonitised over new reporting, content creators self
| censoring to the determent of those with visiabilty issues
| (or simply being on mobile with a small screen) as instead
| of reading out a statement they will display it on screen
| in fear of YT's bots flagging there content.
|
| No content moderation system will be 100% perfect, esp when
| you take it as a worldwide problem. And (atleast in the
| western world) facing demands for more and more content
| moderation.
|
| In an ideal world we should be able to leave it up to the
| user. But Twitter has self filters for years and centeral
| filtering on the platform has only increased not decreased.
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| The old internet with webforums for particular topics, where
| the moderators knew the posters, was a better model.
| cbozeman wrote:
| It really was, but we've largely abandoned that model.
|
| The new model is going to require understanding that there
| are people who are totally opposed to almost everything you
| hold dear... and finding a way to interact with them.
| sterlind wrote:
| Discord (and Reddit, mostly) moderation still works in the
| old ways. Whenever there's something like a server or
| channel or subreddit moderation can be delegated, at least
| somewhat. Maybe vast unstructured oceans like Twitter
| aren't the way forward?
| pixl97 wrote:
| Old internet still had problems that we just didn't recognize
| at the time. Astroturfing in full blast back then, and 4chan
| like floods happened commonly. And getting popular was a
| great way to ruin the place.
| GhostVII wrote:
| Why not have user curated and shareable blocklists? So if I
| never want to see anything from Alex Jones or Milo Yiannopoulos
| and the like, I just subscribe to a blocklist that eliminates
| far right commentators. You could even create networks of
| trusted users where anyone they block, is blocked for everyone
| in the network. Or have shareable rulesets, like "block anyone
| who uses this word", or "block anyone who follows this
| account".
|
| Of course you could create huge echo chambers that way, but
| that happens anyways when you curated your followers, so I
| don't see that as a huge issue. Just now in addition to
| deciding who you follow, you also decide who you block.
|
| Twitter (or whatever platform) would still be responsible for
| eliminating bad actors (spammers, people posting illegal
| content) but other than that could just let users curate what
| they see on the platform.
| fortyseven wrote:
| > Why not have user curated and shareable blocklists?
|
| Not a fan of this.
|
| I've found myself banned a couple times, only to find out I
| likely got caught up someones blocklist that put out a large
| blanket block on anyone friends with someone who followed
| someone else. Or some similar indirect nonsense.
|
| The idea being you're isolating yourself from someone who's
| friends with an asshole, so you're less likely to encounter
| someone you don't like.
|
| And if innocent people get caught up in the dragnet, then so
| be it.
|
| I found this incredibly unfair, and not really smart, either
| -- not every "follow" is an endorsement. :P
| offby37years wrote:
| Why would big tech voluntarily surrender the unprecedented
| power to shape worldwide discourse?
|
| "Power intoxicates men. It is never voluntarily surrendered.
| It must be taken from them." -- James F. Byrnes
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| Why isn't it sufficient to not follow Alex Jones? I've never
| seen a tweet by him. Twitter is one of the least pushy
| platforms in algorithmically pushing content. Just follow
| people you want to see content from, and unfollow if they
| tweet things you don't want to see.
| leephillips wrote:
| There is an even better way. Never look at your timeline,
| so never see any pushed material at all: https://lee-
| phillips.org/howtotwitter/
| oe wrote:
| Do you use the official Twitter clients? Because they seem
| to push different, "popular" content pretty hard. Many
| people joked that 'Super follow' should have been replaced
| by 'Super block'
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| No, it's not enough. Twitter constantly showes me nudes
| that are liked by some people I follow. I hate this
| feature.
|
| They should be an option to limit your feed only to the
| people you follow, but it is unlikely we'll see it because
| it contradicts the platform aim to increase engagement, by
| hook or by crook.
| sellyme wrote:
| > They should be an option to limit your feed only to the
| people you follow
|
| You can functionally get the same thing by using the
| "list" feature instead of following people.
| fakename11 wrote:
| Follow better people? (Or at least don't follow their
| "person" accounts)
| Andrew_nenakhov wrote:
| The people are ok. It just happened that within russian
| opposition female members have a weird tradition to do
| #nudesthursday
|
| I am generally interested in what they write but on
| Thursdays they post nudes and like nudes of other females
| I don't follow, and Twitter shows me a lot of their
| likes. It annoys me to no end.
| dkarras wrote:
| I think that feature exists unless I am imagining things?
| There should be a ... button on the top of the tweet and
| there should be something like "Not interested in this
| tweet" there. When you click it, I think it says "show
| fewer tweets by X" and there should also be an option to
| see fewer of the likes / retweets from a person.
|
| But in reality, in twitter, like is a soft form of
| retweeting and users know it. So if someone you follow
| uses the "like / favorite" feature it also kind of means
| they want people to see it. For bookmarks, there is a
| different bookmark functionality. On twitter, like is a
| low weighted retweet that does not show up in the user's
| profile directly.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| The feature exists, but it doesn't work. Repeatedly
| asking for "fewer likes by this person" doesn't visibly
| reduce the frequency of those likes being pushed onto
| you. The whole thing is a stupid misfeature: Likes are
| not retweets, so they shouldn't behave like them.
| X6S1x6Okd1st wrote:
| I started to build this out, but the twitter api access
| grants are basically all or nothing and that dismayed me
| enough to give up
| rodgerd wrote:
| You could probably get some value from https://secateur.app/
| but there are also various blocktogether the groups.
| duskwuff wrote:
| BlockTogether shut down in January, after Twitter disabled
| the APIs it used.
| Anon1096 wrote:
| I think this is a pretty good solution to the social media
| algorithmic problems. In a post-S230 world, it'd be pretty
| neat to see platforms implement decentralized moderation
| schemes.
| mulmen wrote:
| In a post-S230 world there are no platforms.
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200531/23325444617/hell
| o...
| Anon1096 wrote:
| Thanks for linking me to an article that I've already
| read, but I made none of the statements written there,
| nor does that article state that "In a post-S230 world
| there are no platforms."
| detaro wrote:
| Shared twitter blocklists are a thing through third-party
| apps. (Twitter did have basic CSV import/export for block
| lists too, but didn't further improve that feature and
| silently dropped it at some point)
| Camillo wrote:
| > Why not have user curated and shareable blocklists?
|
| Because often the goal is to control what _others_ can see.
| andybak wrote:
| Whilst what you say isn't bereft of truth, your phrasing
| conjours up a shadowy cabal - which in turn makes me wonder
| if you're deep down one of several potential conspiracy
| rabbit holes yourself.
|
| If you don't want to give this impression you would benefit
| from modifying your tone.
| lupire wrote:
| It was a simple statement of undisputed fact proclaimed
| by Twitter management and their peers.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| This does happen on a small scale with third party apps, but
| it seems like doing it on a large scale would just shift the
| review problem to the curators of the blocklists. If I ran a
| "known doxxers" blocklist, I'd have to rely on the same kinds
| of scripts that got Twitter in trouble here.
| njharman wrote:
| Yep. Censorship doesn't work. At least not centralized
| censorship at scale.
| offby37years wrote:
| Thankfully, as seen in Russia and India, those thousands of
| cultures have no wish to be moderated by the self-anointed SV
| elite.
| outside1234 wrote:
| You should add China to your list of repressive government
| moderation - would be more complete that way.
| umeshunni wrote:
| It's only repressive government moderation when someone
| else does it. When it happens in the US, it's "policing
| hate speech".
| andybak wrote:
| That's a fair argument but only if you embrace the
| logical conclusion of the stance you are taking.
|
| If you are arguing for unbridled free speech then fair
| enough (Personally I wouldn't but we can have that
| conversaion).
|
| If however you have your own feelings about sane limits
| on free speech - then you can't take this position
| without someone else using your argument against you.
|
| It's fine to make these kind of grand statements but I'd
| like you to clearly state that you're going all the way
| with it and not just being slightly less inconsistent
| than the person you're calling out.
| edoceo wrote:
| I think the parent might have been sarcastic. Hard to
| tell in text only. I read the last line as "pOlIcInG hAtE
| sPeEch" with USA being the butt of the joke.
| panny wrote:
| >If you are arguing for unbridled free speech then fair
| enough (Personally I wouldn't but we can have that
| conversaion).
|
| It's just words. Sticks and stones... What I see on
| social media platforms is a UX made to require
| moderation. Once upon a time, the user had the power to
| ignore people with the click of a button. "Don't feed the
| troll" was common wisdom. If Alex Jones or anyone else
| said something you didn't like, you just ignored them and
| never hear them again.
|
| All the "gamification" of social media made everyone
| participating in social media into "gamers" who throw
| tantrums and their little joysticks when they "lose"
| points. Just like when you got your ass beat playing
| Mortal Kombat. Then moderators, like parents, come in to
| scold you and give you a timeout/suspension/whatever.
| ivan_gammel wrote:
| The moderation by Russian government isn't something I would
| wish to any culture.
| offby37years wrote:
| The US is already at Soviet levels:
| https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-sovietization-of-the-
| ameri...
| h2odragon wrote:
| Killfiles worked for usenet
| CydeWeys wrote:
| They really didn't. And they certainly don't work now; just
| look at how completely overrun with spam Usenet is these
| days.
| lupire wrote:
| That's because all the humans moved to modern tools, but
| spam scales very easily.
| pfraze wrote:
| I'm curious, How were those killfiles different than muting
| or blocking on Twitter? Usenet was a little before my time.
| robarr wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_file
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| It's like muting users. Or muting messages by topic.
| Essentially a more advanced and useful technology than any
| of the social networks offer today.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| Twitter allows you to mute users, keywords, and I believe
| specific threads. Killfiles weren't more advanced than
| that.
| lamontcg wrote:
| What worked for Usenet was contacting the "sysop" of the node
| the user was posting from, usually upenn, and getting them to
| have a chat with the user and/or ban them. If their admin
| wasn't responsive, contact the upstream of their site.
|
| Decentralized policing of users and having one responsible
| "moderator" per a few hundred users.
|
| Then the internet was opened for commercial use and we got
| Eternal September and Canter and Siegel.
| pmiller2 wrote:
| That's just asking users to moderate themselves.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| It worked for a while for the single user.
|
| However with growth there were more bad users and misbehaving
| users still could give a bad impression to new people in a
| group, thus limiting acquiring new users.
| mountainb wrote:
| It's a modern reliving of the myth of the Tower of Babel.
| zokier wrote:
| > the end result is going to have countless false positives
|
| I suspect the real measured false positive rate is remarkably
| low. Cases like this make great headlines but still impact only
| tiny fraction of Twitters hundreds of millions of users and
| happen rarely compared to the message volume.
| cbozeman wrote:
| There _is_ no way to moderate the entire world. The sooner
| everyone alive accepts this, the better off we will be.
|
| The values of a Black lesbian female software developer who
| grew up in San Francisco and went to Stanford will _never_ be
| compatible with the values of a Hispanic straight male Marine
| officer who grew up in San Antonio and went to Texas Christian
| University and has been deployed to 17 different countries.
|
| However, they can and do exist on the same platforms. They can
| exist because both of them are going to _HAVE_ to learn how to
| engage with one another, even though their existences are
| completely incompatible and utterly different.
|
| There's no technology _on_ _Earth_ powerful enough to solve for
| the human condition. We have to evolve our ways of thinking and
| interacting.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| > They can exist because both of them are going to HAVE to
| learn how to engage with one another
|
| You're assuming good faith from both parties. Harassers and
| trolls don't act in good faith.
| jojobas wrote:
| The Valley's position on who of the two needs to disappear
| from the social media landscape has crystallized already.
| erikpukinskis wrote:
| I am not sure I understand your claim... there are many
| global-scale companies that do moderate their entire site...
| Google, Reddit, Amazon.
|
| Are you trying to make a more specific claim than your post
| lets on? Maybe that it's impossible to moderate without
| making some concession you don't prefer? Or it's impossible
| to moderate away certain kinds of things?
| pixl97 wrote:
| And said companies are quite often on HN for screwing up
| said moderation.
| obscoth wrote:
| They aren't actually making a claim. It's an emotional
| appeal to "free speech" absolutism, whatever that means.
| BaseS4 wrote:
| The banning has to continue because if we stop now, we'd have
| to admit the bans we did between 2016 and 2020 were equally
| ridiculous and arbitrary.
|
| No, we must ramp up the bans so that we never acknowledge
| past mistakes. This is the way.
| onion2k wrote:
| _However, they can and do exist on the same platforms. They
| can exist because both of them are going to HAVE to learn how
| to engage with one another, even though their existences are
| completely incompatible and utterly different._
|
| How are those two people's lives on social media
| incompatible? There's a million things they could have in
| common - a love of tacos, a band to talk about, a shared joke
| about a dumb celebrity, etc etc.99.9999% of the time
| different people can and do coexist in the same spaces.
|
| The idea that two wildly different people with different
| points of view can't even exist in the same social network is
| nonsense. The only time incompatible points of view are a
| problem is when one or other person decides to try to
| invalidate the existence of the other. That's what moderation
| is there to stop. If people are just tweeting about their
| life there's nothing to moderate.
| refenestrator wrote:
| "invalidate existence" can do a lot of work though if
| you're sufficiently motivated.
|
| There are a lot of 40-60% popular views that invalidate
| someone's existence according to certain parts of twitter.
| rospaya wrote:
| That's a very American way of thinking, just the kind of
| reasoning that allowed Facebook to almost destroy your
| democracy.
|
| I'm aware that discussing free speech on any platform is a
| fool's errand, but at some point somebody has to say that
| making people angry is profitable and facilitated through the
| US concept of giving anyone a platform to say anything with
| very little consequences.
|
| And the last four years really showed how far it can go.
|
| > They can exist because both of them are going to HAVE to
| learn how to engage with one another
|
| People never ever learn. Wearing a mask has become a
| political struggle, people literally rather died than wore a
| piece of cloth just because they looked at it emotionally and
| not rationally, like you software dev and Marine officer
| would.
| reaperducer wrote:
| More proof that Elvis lives.
| userbinator wrote:
| As the catchphrase goes, "The problem with censorship is that
| <censored>"
|
| I hope instances like these continue to drive people away from
| centralised and heavily-censored platforms.
|
| Personally, the only thing I do with Twitter is to read when I'm
| linked there, but now that they've started to block those who
| don't want to run their arbitrary code just to read some text and
| images, I have even less desire to use the site.
| giantrobot wrote:
| I would like to coin a new phrase, the "Game Master Dilemma".
| For any self selecting group the number of people willing to do
| thankless hard work decreases with respect to the difficulty of
| the task considerate with the reward.
|
| In tabletop games there's often far fewer players willing to
| take the Game Master role because it's more difficult. The
| people that take the role have to really enjoy the task and the
| "reward" (good feelings because people had fun).
|
| This means there's far more _players_ than _Game Masters_. I
| think this applies to everyone making (in my opinion) pithy
| statements about "centralized platforms". There's vastly more
| centralized-social-media-platform users than people with the
| technical capability, time, and money to run some smaller
| social media instance. The ratio of players to Game Masters is
| huge. It can be a lot of work/expense to run a board for even a
| small group of users.
|
| This means that larger more centralized platforms will end up
| being the norm because they centralize the infrastructure and
| lower the friction for users to do the _interesting_ stuff like
| discuss topics or share cat pictures. Because the central
| platforms are being Game Masters players can flock to the
| platforms and network effects will draw more users.
|
| If you want some magical world of super decentralized community
| moderated social media (you basically want mailing lists) you
| need to solve the Game Master Dilemma. Infrastructure is not
| free in time or money. The more demands on the infrastructure
| the more it costs. The only decentralized community moderated
| platforms that will exist are ones where the Game Master to
| player ratio is low. The higher it gets the worse of a job it
| is being the Game Master until it's not worthwhile at all.
| stormqloud wrote:
| Some twitter $2/hr contract worker for a subcontator (I knew
| nothing about the slave labor) on the other side of the world
| having fun.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| If that were true they would've blocked a more common word.
| "The" for example.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| Apparently fixed, judging by going to twitter.com/explore and
| searching for "Memphis".
| TazeTSchnitzel wrote:
| Not everyone who tweets it gets blocked. It's not clear why.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I don't have a Twitter account anymore, so I couldn't test
| it.
| faeyanpiraat wrote:
| Wrong!
|
| You can always create an account!
|
| This is a completely legitimate reason to do so.
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I don't think that's at all a healthy response, given my
| history.
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| It is not fixed yet. Twitter lets you decide if you want to
| appeal the block or delete the tweet. Many people will appeal.
| Animats wrote:
| It's too bad Kafka didn't live long enough to see online
| moderation. We still have Cory Doctorow, of "Unauthorized Bread",
| of course.
| h2odragon wrote:
| As Twitter has been accepted as the ultimate arbiter of what may
| be said, I suggest the city of Memphis rename itself "Graceland,"
| thus pleasing all the Elvis fans, boosting tourism, and avoiding
| sticky complications about legal technicalities.
| dgellow wrote:
| What about Memphis, Egypt?
| yakk0 wrote:
| Ramses?
| drdec wrote:
| They are welcome to steal Graceland's name, after all turn
| about is fair play.
| einpoklum wrote:
| Yeah, that's been called "Manf" for probably over a 1,000
| years now.
| Laforet wrote:
| It's still not too late to rename their city Thebes - last
| time I checked the one in Greece burned down and they haven't
| had time to rebuild it, yet.
| tibbon wrote:
| I got banned in 2008 for similarly silly (and unknowable)
| reasons. Posted zero, and I mean zero, spicy content. Maybe they
| didn't like me posting a soy latte or a photo of a dog. But I got
| a ban for almost a week. And then suddenly it worked again, and
| they refused to say why or what triggered it. Maybe Jack or Ev
| got drunk and started hitting buttons. Zero transparency or
| apology, so I can only speculate.
|
| Tried this one out- said the super private magic word, and got a
| ban. Appealed it to ask them why.
| georgyo wrote:
| If you venmo someone with the word Cuban in the message, it locks
| both accounts.
| mcintyre1994 wrote:
| Looks like there's some exception, maybe blue ticks?
| https://twitter.com/swodinsky/status/1371187070815846400?s=2...
| sneak wrote:
| All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than
| others.
| notsureaboutpg wrote:
| Why does every mediocre (let alone terrible and harmful)
| journalist get a blue tick on Twitter?
| idlewords wrote:
| One neat trick doubles your productivity!
| threevox wrote:
| Social media companies hate this weird trick!
| i_have_an_idea wrote:
| Yeah, can confirm. It does work.
|
| I don't suggest trying it, as unlocking your account requires
| phone no. and email verification... yikes.
| leshenka wrote:
| I tried to create a Twitter account once. 5 minutes after
| creation it got suspended and unlocking required a phone no.
| Same goes for Facebook
| pixl97 wrote:
| Same here. I let it stay suspended. Weeks later it came out
| that Twitter had a flaw that let anyone see your phone
| number.
|
| It will be a cold day in hell before I give them my number,
| and I survived the Texas icepocolypse this year.
| Spare_account wrote:
| https://twitter.com/SwiftOnSecurity/status/13711918852686725...
|
| > _What 's possible is a Twitter staffer tried to block a street
| address, but the postal syntax acted as an escape sequence, or
| the original was multi-line and they only pasted the city._
|
| What postal syntax in the US looks like an escape sequence?
| floatingatoll wrote:
| CR
| Y_Y wrote:
| I got blocked too, and so was referring to the ancient Egyptian
| city.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis,_Egypt
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Could be a typo or filling in whatever field incompletely -
| e.g. they meant to block a specific street address but only got
| the city name in the "block" field.
| swiftonsecurity wrote:
| I meant separator token, sorry.
| ImaCake wrote:
| Very easy to imagine a , or a \n being directly before and/or
| after a city name.
| [deleted]
| Lammy wrote:
| Probably the comma faking out a CSV parser? US addresses are
| typically written like "123 Fake St, Memphis, TN 38002" with
| commas between the street address and city, between the city
| and state, but not between the state and ZIP code.
|
| e: I wonder if somebody with a large handful of accounts to
| burn could narrow down the intended block target by tweeting
| every combination of
| "{states_containing_a_memphis__abbreviation} {ZIP_code}" until
| one of them gets blocked? http://www.city-
| data.com/zipmaps/Memphis-Tennessee.html
| elmcrest wrote:
| rofl I'm also blocked
| dsego wrote:
| me too
| halotrope wrote:
| I just tried. It works. But why?
| [deleted]
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Reminds me of The Hhitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
|
| > Belgium is the rudest word in the Universe, yet by a strange
| coincidence, also the name of a country on Earth. In the
| Secondary Phase of the radio series, it is stated as "completely
| banned in all parts of the Galaxy, except in one part, where they
| don't know what it means, and in serious screenplays.
| PastaMonster wrote:
| On youtube you can have Thailand in the comment. If it do contain
| Thailand the comment will be auto-deleted. Thailand I can
| understand. Many people are homophobic and some made the mistake
| to take what looked like a woman home for some bed time and got
| upset when they realized they have made out with another man that
| whole time.
|
| But Memphis, I don't have a clue why twitter dislikes that place.
| Can someone fill me in, please?
| paulpauper wrote:
| When it comes to cenrsohpip and selective enforcement of rules,
| twitter is the worst of the social networks. THE CEO has lied
| about ghosting and so many other things. terrible company.
| J253 wrote:
| Ugh...I have a HN Twitter bot that just tried to post this and it
| got locked.
|
| https://www.twitter.com/hackernewstop10
| artemave wrote:
| Oh man, I'm two bots down: https://twitter.com/Hn251 and
| https://twitter.com/Hn150
| hirsin wrote:
| Oh no, I hadn't even thought of that. Yes, likely many bots
| locked for this.
| billrobertson42 wrote:
| It doesn't appear to be locked now.
| JdeBP wrote:
| Apparently the company has very recently tweeted that a "bug"
| causing this has now been fixed.
| billrobertson42 wrote:
| Good for them. Bug, mistake, bad data, or whatever. Glad
| they fixed it.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| "The company" hasn't tweeted about this either at
| https://twitter.com/twitter or
| https://twitter.com/TwitterSupport. Link or it didn't
| happen.
| JdeBP wrote:
| I said "apparently" because my source was a screenshot of
| a tweet saying "Sorry for that.", just as this Gizmodo
| reporter also saw.
|
| * https://gizmodo.com/twitter-banned-me-for-saying-the-m-
| word-...
| rgj wrote:
| The reason for the ban is "revealing private information". It
| seems to be related to a Dutch soccer player Memphis Depay.
|
| https://twitter.com/OL_English/status/1371121328649076744
| madars wrote:
| Oh! When I first read the headline, I thought of Windows 98
| (codename: Memphis), and got excited this is gonna be
| something retro about an elite UX design.
| tom_mellior wrote:
| I read that tweet as OL's social media team having heard of
| the problem and poking fun at Twitter. Nothing in that tweet
| suggests that there is a causal relationship with that
| specific person.
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