Discord starts shutting down communities for “misinformation” | Hacker News Reader

Discord starts shutting down communities for “misinformation”

reclaimthenet.org

21 pointsrbecker16 comments

Every step into censoring polite conversation about mundane topics is a step towards tech companies arbitrarily keeping whatever information they deem fit a secret. We could become unable to share information we want and have a legitimate reason to share with remote coworkers simply because tech wants that knowledge to be kept dark.

The public vs private dichotomy makes no sense anymore, discord isn't keeping you private from the prying eyes of passerbys and saving you from public embarrasment. 99% of normal people don't care what you say about the price of green beans in your "private" channel.

Discord is keeping your information in their databases and silencing you at their tyrannical whim. The dichotomy is having your community and stored knowledge blackholed by tech companies or posting somewhere the people can save what you wrote from exctinction.

Is there any reason that you absolutely have to build a community on their platform? This seems like a perfect reason to start your own tech company.

You need to build somewhere. Many ISPs will make it difficult or impossible to run a server on a home connection.

> polite conversation about mundane topics

Is lying polite? Is lying respectful? Misinformation is not only harmful but also disrespectful towards your audience. So, I agree with you that "polite conversation about mundane topics" should be respected. But it is not what is on discussion here.

polite: having or showing behavior that is respectful and considerate of other people.

Is it lying? Do we have so much faith in Discord that we'd let them judge that even for private communities? For example, would they have labeled claims that the harms of fat are exaggerated due to a conspiracy by the sugar industry [1], as misinformation before 2016?

Oh but that was four long years ago. Surely by now all that we think is true, is true, and all that we think is false is false. And surely they will censor with only the best intentions, regardless of their personal politics, or external financial influence.

[1] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...

I agree! There are even some people disrespecting their audience with weird ideas like heliocentrism! The greatest Authority, the church, has already said that's fake news!

Yes, the flat earth nonsense is a good example. The idea is from what most people agree is a corrupt reading of religious texts. The people peddling it, dishonestly pretend to be doing science and misrepresent science and the evidence so they can dupe people who are not educated in science enough to understand why it is all wrong. And the problem is, now that they have convinced people that they are being lied to by the rest whole rest of the world, they start to believe anything including misinformation and blatant lies about wearing masks during a pandemic somehow being dangerous and rubbish about 5G harming people. I'm all for free speech but until there is a cost for shouting fire in an auditorium when there is is no fire, private companies have a duty to not be a vector for this misinformation to be propagated on their platforms.

> blatant lies about wearing masks during a pandemic

You know, back at the start of the pandemic every health authority from the CDC to the WHO to the surgeon General said that masks were bad.

Should private companies have "had a duty" not to allow "misinformation" like pro mask arguments to spread?

Actually, the advice was that the ordinary public didn't need to wear them and it was based on fears that there wouldn't be enough for medical workers as they would disappear like the toilet roll did. The advice about masks from health authorties is based on many factors, from the pragmatic use due to supply and their usefulness in preventing transmission based on research and the advice of people whose job is knowing about these things. The proliferation of misinformation about masks by people who can barely tie their shoelaces is at best bad information during normal times but during a pandemic, it is down right dangerous. Their claims that the mask doesn't protect the wearer is correct to some extent but they fail to point out that the mask that I wear, protects other people. The masks, combined with social distancing would bring down the 'r' value but because there are so many people having "learned" this misinformation and not taken precautions, we are now heading into a second wave. This is directly the fault of these people spreading the misinformation as the cost will be many more dead, more lost jobs and more damage to the world economy. If they had any valid evidence or even any real medical training (homeopathy is not valid training), there would be a case for them to present their case but most of the ones that I have seen, to put it as nicely as I can, are completely clueless.

Is your position that everything is relative and truth does not exists? Is that a quote of some book that I do not know? Am I missing the reference?

Your answer is sarcastic and I do not see how it helps to improve my understanding of your position.

Ah the tyranny of a voluntary service. We need the government to force them to be less tyrannical because that form of influence has never been abused to enforce actual tyranny over non voluntarily services. Maybe the free market should hold these companies accountable and we dont have to hand over power.

You won't ever know if the company has erased your data. What incentive does a company have to clear a hard drive with your info on it, if you're not paying them? The only way to re-balance the system is via legal fiat.

Free market works when the company depends on the customer ("consumer"). As soon as you sign up, most free services don't have a free market incentive anymore to service the customer.

I think data privacy protection is different than regulating speach and should be handled differently. This is not unlike how we regulate real world forums and doctors managing personal information differently.

Cant we have companies self regulate what gets posted on their platform while assuring that they are accountable for not abusing personal information.

Not the point I'm making. Data "privacy protection" is carte blanche for a data holder to blackhole knowledge, against the user's will if desired.

Regulating speech is a dying game either way. The people who profit from disruptive language need something to endlessly debate while the quietly agree on the outcome ahead of time. Disruptive language is fuel to their fire.

>Cant we have companies self regulate what gets posted on their platform while assuring that they are accountable for not abusing personal information.

You tell me, you're making a massive demand on a whim.

Im failing to grasp your view. If you care to elaborate on what you mean by

> Data "privacy protection" is carte blanche for a data holder to blackhole knowledge, against the user's will if desired.

And

> Disruptive Language

I would love to continue the discussion.

Im just not up on these terms

I'm figuring it out as a I go along, those aren't official terms.

Say you run a discord channel and you own a chain of flower shops. You've just discovered a new technique of cutting flowers that gives you competitive edge and has far reaching implications across all your franchisees. Valuable information. You lay out how to do the cutting in immaculate detail, with your staff in discord. You go to sleep and wake up the next day.

Discord has found you've broken some rule, banned you and banned any mention of the technique. You lose your account. You & your staff can no longer talk about flower cutting on discord. Discord did not delete the data, it still has the details of this technique laid out on their servers.

Your staff work remote so you contact them primarily through social media. You find that your communications about this topic are not getting through.

That's the black-hole, they retain the information, you can't access it or discuss it. On their arbitrary whim. What recourse do we have to make discord delete a trade secret, or any secret? My flowershop competitors suddenly starts implementing the technique I discussed therefore is Discord ever liable for a data leak?

Writing on a bright website like HN is enough to make sure I can probably see what I type later on, at archive.org. Anything you put into certain cloud services is going down with the ship, when it wants to blackhole your data.

Disruptive language is that game we saw a few years ago. You endlessly drill down and analyze the definitions of individual words to establish a new meaning that changes the game. One or two words carry the weight of the future, currently it's 'hierarchy' across all the intellectuals. They just then endlessly debate their worldview and how they relate to one-another whilst silently agreeing on the all the implications of a single word someone else defined for them.

So sure, regulate language. The definitions of words have already been disrupted, the only thing left to do is get everyone pointing in the same direction and frankly it's like watching paint dry. Inevitable and speeds up with more hot air. It's amazing how much of the world is basically talk-radio writ large at the moment and so little novel information is being said.

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