HNthrow22

this take is so pretentious that it reads like tech bro satire. Ah yes, customizing my email footer settings will showcase my refined taste and advanced aesthetic sense.

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'California voters absolutely own voting for proposition 22'

To be fair they set a new record for money spent on supporting a ballot measure in state history ($225m) and it still only passed with 58%.

If you divide the $225m spent lobbying this by the 9,339,069 votes for it comes out to $23.98 per vote.

https://ballotpedia.org/California_Proposition_22,_App-Based... https://www.latimes.com/projects/props-california-2020-elect...

RIP.

I'd love to know why is this allowed but Kobe threads were all removed?

> The media has fallen into the well-known trap of optimizing the wrong KPI. You want to maximize trust with the public, not engagement

KPI for whose benefit? Shareholders or the 'public good'? Why would a for-profit entity optimize for the public good over profits?

Fox news is crushing all their competitors optimizing for engagement.

Who is winning optimizing for trust?

This story is so wild, imagine being this couple and trying to tell the police ebay execs are harassing me because I wrote mean things about them on the internet. This is a widespread thing that's going on in our culture right now, organized bullying and targetted harassment by those in power and it's having devastating consequences on the public discourse. This case is unique because the overconfidence and carelessness of the execs led to them being caught but in most cases people aren't reckless enough to leave easily tracked evidence of their misdeeds.

I can think of multiple examples of agriculture/pharma companies and game publishers engaging in this type of retaliatory harassment, most cases they're not careless enough to get caught.

agreed man, have fond memories of tweaking themes for daily drivers like irc client, winamp foobar2000, compared to like spotify or discord now feels so neutered and limited in terms of customizing appearance.

a dark pattern because while it's not actually required it might as well be, their 'account locked' email conveniently leaves out that you can simply email them and have them re-enable the account without a phone number.

that email for the curious:

Hello,

Your account appears to have exhibited automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules: https://support.twitter.com/articles/18311.

In order to continue safely using Twitter, please follow these steps:

1. Log in to your account on the web or open your Twitter app (iOS or Android). 2. You’ll see a prompt letting you know your account has been locked. Click or tap “Start”. 3. Select your country/region from the drop down menu, and then enter your phone number. 4. Click “Send code” and Twitter will send you a text message with a confirmation code (note that your standard message rates may apply). 5. Enter the code you received in the “Your code” box and click “Submit”. 6. You will see a confirmation message that your account is now unlocked.

Once you confirm your identity, it may take up to a few minutes for your account to be unlocked.

If you’re still experiencing an issue after confirming your identity, please reply to this message and provide us with specific details of the problem you're experiencing. We’ll do our best to help!

Thanks,

Twitter Support

If you reply to this saying you don't have a phone they will re-enable your account but there's no mention of that or "click here to verify account" option.

One contract that was handed to me from an established company even included a clause that any IP created by even up to 5 (FIVE!) years AFTER you're no longer employed belongs to the company. Vaguely defined as anythikng related to the 'core business' (technology). Ridiculous and thankfully at least under CA laws completely unenforceable bully tactics.

FIFA (The governing body for soccer) issues similar fines and bans for any political messages. ie fined they recently fined English/Scotish FA's 100k for players wearing poppies (a flower) which symbolize fallen soldiers from WW1*.

In both cases while on a base human level it FEELS wrong, if you follow the $$ end of the day the broadcast is the product they're selling to advertisers. Adding any sort of political/divisive messaging could be easily kill those deals - makes sense given the finances. You're attacking their primary income stream, of course they're gonna come at you hard.

The player is not owed any platform by participating in this Blizzard event. If they banned him for comments made on his own social media outside of the event it would be a different story.

To be clear I'm not defending Blizzard, just explaining why most broadcast orgs will react similarly.

It is what it is, until the advertising based model of entertainment changes it'll continue to be this way.

Worth noting cloudflare leadership has been fighting this war for years and this is just a small battle.

Can you tell us when @Cloudflare will be holding its next "How to Protect Nazi Extremists" workshop? You guys seem to be the experts. 10:25 AM - 14 Aug 2017

The recent string of violence has forced their hand here.

https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/1124091916520497153

https://twitter.com/klarajk/status/1122625367490146304

https://twitter.com/Riverseeker/status/1122612031234945024

https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1123592717341200384

https://twitter.com/NathanBLawrence/status/10562868097418199....

https://twitter.com/NJDemocrat/status/897147112273608705

https://twitter.com/InvestMib/status/1123308004873515015

https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1124415034610860033

it's ridiculous it's given this much attention when there's far more nefarious activity and problems caused by big tech that are to date totally under the radar outside of a few researchers and journalists, and they go far beyond privacy violations (controlling global narratives/elections for one, facilitating the indoctrination of populations by optimizing for user engagement).

what I found interesting was how quickly Hn jumped to action (contacting investors, pension funds) relating to NGO on a completely unsubstantiated report. "May have been" was the quote from that article. I can't recall the last time I've ever seen upvoted Hn comments outraged enough to contact investors let alone from an unconfirmed report.

This is fantastic, thanks for writing it and for your testimony!

my favorite bits

"The emergence of this tech oligopoly reflects a profound shift in our society, the migration of every area of commercial, social, and personal life into an online realm where human interactions are mediated by software."

"Consumers will just as rightly point out that they never consented to be the subjects in an uncontrolled social experiment, that the companies engaged in reshaping our world have consistently refused to honestly discuss their business models or data collection practices, and that in a democratic society, profound social change requires consensus and accountability."

Brilliant!

FB is the sacrificial lamb, popular scapegoat and effective distraction in this new era of SV policies shaping public opinion, ideas and as a result global politics. It seems misplaced, the amount of vitriol and negative press directed at facebook when from my perspective Google/Twitter/Amazon and even Reddit are far, far worse in terms of aggressively monopolistic behavior and negative effects on society and democracy. The fallout and effects of these platforms unparalleled power and influence is not well-researched yet. The key part that strikes me as disingenuous if these outlets and politicians who fling so much mud towards FB cared so much about privacy violations where were the billion dollar fines and string of hit pieces on Equifax (Who also collect and store your info without your consent)? The answer is there weren't any because they don't, and this is just a distraction from the real shit.

> They're definitely taking an approach of culling anything that advertisers might not like.

This could not be further from reality, see https://old.reddit.com/r/AgainstHateSubreddits/comments/a3q6... to get a small preview of the attitudes of their executive team and the kind of content they allow to proliferate and spread on their platform.

> Reddit is another example a company that has recently scrubbed itself of most controversial content,

I agree with you on most points however reddit takes no action against extremists and fringe groups proliferating on their platform until substantial pressure is applied from either advertisers or journalists. They go as far as shadowbanning users who bring up their lack of action to shine a light on their culpability, presumably to keep it off of mainstream journalists radar, thankfully it's now too late and enough good journalists have picked up the scent. Expect to see many great pieces about this in the near future.

Reddit also scrubs the profiles and post history of mass shooters who were indoctrinated on their platform, one example is Elliot Rodgers the incel and Santa Barbara shooter from several years ago, truly disgusting and frightening behavior that denies researchers and journalists from understanding the reach and impact of the spread of ideologies and hatred on these platforms.

Just last week in the wake of the Poway synagogue shooting the #1 post on /r/conspiracy was a holocaust denial post, https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D6HG_LMUUAEXYJy.png:large that received 2x reddit gold.

to offer a counter opinion I found wordfence highly obtrusive, annoying and full of dark patterns in an attempt to upsell you to premium. They present in their dashboard ALL attacks within their entire network as if those were attacks on your site in particular which is misleading. If the project permits the best practice is to convert the site into fully static HTML (WP2Static, SimplyStatic) and keep the backend site/database separate and local only.

I'm far from courageous, in fact I'm scared because these groups regularly DoX those who draw attention to this pressing issue:

https://thenextweb.com/opinion/2018/07/17/the-daily-callers-...

http://www.sfweekly.com/news/daily-caller-doxxes-the-s-f-guy...

Journalist like Robert Evans are courageous: https://www.bellingcat.com/news/americas/2019/04/28/ignore-t...

Researchers like Whitney Phillips are courageous https://www.wired.com/story/existential-crisis-plaguing-onli...

I'm just disgusted.

archive.is is a very important tool in online extremism research and you've taken money from far-right extremists, your explanation for why it's inaccessible seems incomplete.

This is probably where I get banned from Hn but it has to be said - to posture as if you care about end users while in the same breath taking money from extremists and turning over personal identifiable information to far-right outlets like DailyStormer, is disingenuous at best and I can think of other ways to describe it which are less charitable.

You also host and protect 8chan.

https://twitter.com/ncweaver/status/1124091916520497153

https://twitter.com/klarajk/status/1122625367490146304

https://twitter.com/Riverseeker/status/1122612031234945024

https://twitter.com/slpng_giants/status/1123592717341200384

https://twitter.com/NathanBLawrence/status/10562868097418199...

https://twitter.com/NJDemocrat/status/897147112273608705

https://twitter.com/InvestMib/status/1123308004873515015

https://twitter.com/jwz/status/1124415034610860033

I understand the appeal of that for developers but it comes at the cost of users agency and control of their own system, I've been very annoyed with even simple UI changes in firefox updates as I simply didn't ask or want any such change. Reading other comments here it's clear I'm a dying breed of old and stubborn users that prefers full control and agency over my own system. Making it easier for web developers to implement new features is absolutely not a tradeoff I'd make willingly at the cost of my systems consistency and reliability. Also the reason I use firefox is because of all the major browsers vendors they seem the most aligned with those values although this seems to be changing more and more every year.

I have all of the privacy options unchecked including studies but Normandy (which I've just found out about via this issue) is still enabled.

except at the moment we're dealing with highly organized paid misinformation campaigns and widespread propaganda under the guise of free speech. This will not be popular on Hn but in my opinion holding users and platforms responsible for the messages they distribute to millions is the inevitable evolution and future of social media, society has demonstrated the inability to responsibly handle anonymous unchecked mass communication - anti vax is just one example and those consequences (Measles is back) are just the tip of the iceberg.

"The extraordinary step reflects growing global concern, particularly among governments, about the capacity of American-owned networks to spin up violence."

"Officials blocked the platforms, he said, out of fear that misinformation about the attacks and hate speech could spread, provoking more violence."

Good, a step in the right direction and finally officials are connecting the dots on this. I know HN hates to hear this but this is long overdue. It's my view that the executives in charge of these social networks should face criminal prosecution for their supreme negligence and wildly irresponsible behavior, allowing extremism to spread and hateful ideologies to flourish in the name of increasing quarterly engagement metrics. Free speech has little to do with this.

Social media is a fertile breeding ground for hate and a powerful recruitment tool for extremists. I doubt we're able to sort through all the FUD and misinformation, concerted and successful efforts to dictate public opinion and change narratives to suit whatever special interests or political agendas. We're truly in the post-truth era, with the power in the hands of a few SV elite and billionaire aristocrats. From everything I've seen I don't see mankind sorting this out before it's too late for all of us. Social media is the great filter.

Why are discussions surrounding Chinese Politics permitted but no other political discussions? Seems like a double standard. Just quickly looking at the removals here's a 4 hour old Mueller report thread instantly removed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19712217.

poor phrasing on my part and I think we're in agreement about this, of course companies should have control what goes on their platform, they're not public services - the issue today is they have the power but none of the consequences from potential fallout. Should we really be placing that power in the hands of for profit entities? Regulation is it's own bag of worms, but at least the government is in theory meant to be acting in the interest of the populace vs. shareholders - a key difference especially in dealing with influence/reach/impact of the likes of twitter, facebook, reddit etc

How is it dangerous? How are you able to equate "I was unfairly harsh in my judgement of X" with "X wasn't bad"? That doesn't follow, it's simply a comparison.

Gates and MS anti-trust violations are now standard operating procedure for today's tech giants, the behavior of MS in the 90s looks incredibly harmless when compared to the wildly irresponsible socially dangerous behavior of tech giants today. We seemed to have just collectively forgotten about anti-trust and decided that the natural monopoly of tech services will be the new status quo. But anti-trust is nothing compared to the perils and social consequences of the 'move fast and break things' approach of technology and software today. The Boeing 737max is one recent example, but we're just starting to unravel the social and cultural costs of allowing companies with unprecedented power to shape human behavior and public opinions, dictate what is and is acceptable speech for their platform in the name of quarterly growth. Seems like a reasonable comment and insight to me.

"Supporters said it’s led to a 41 per cent reduction in bed sores, a 30 per cent reduction in falls and patients being discharged from hospital an average 1.8 days sooner."

Those are some wild numbers if that can be backed up with data. Always found hospital gowns dehumanizing and never put them on when given instructions to during yearly physical exams, never had an issue with it it or any doctors asking me to put it on, stringently following procedures and protocols when there's blatant evidence in your face that it's harmful seems a common trend in healthcare, at least in the US, probably for liability reasons.

This comment thread is both celebratory and hateful, truly disgusting from Hn.

Celebrating space mission failures for any reason is a terrible look.

This is a cultural difference, try to take a step back from your own preconceived cultural norms. What's considered confidence in Israel would qualify as hubris in American culture - there's much less value placed on being humble or soft-spoken in Israeli culture. I make no judgements about if this is better/worse but I certainly wouldn't dream of relishing in their failure even if I perceived them as "cocky".

nvm