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> idiots at Twitter A constructive comment would have been to point us at good spam filters that are very good at not allowing obvious spam so that we do not m

by modsec 8y ago

> idiots at Twitter A constructive comment would have been to point us at good spam filters that are very good at not allowing obvious spam so that we do not make the same mistake that Twitter did and be labelled as "idiots" by the likes of you on the Internet.

Rjevski 8y ago
Any of the open-source email spam filters? Not saying they’re excellent by any means but they’d at least take care of the most obvious spam there is. False positives can be dealt with appeals - allow people to actually appeal the decision and get a human to review it. I’d take the occasional false positive with a proper appeals system any day over the current cesspool that is Twitter.
- modsec 8y ago
  Like what? SpamAssassin? You would be surprised how much obvious spam gets through it in the face of the kind of spam onslaught that goes on in the real world today. Seriously, this problem is not as easy to solve for machines as you think it is.
  - kaoD 8y ago
    Well, they're Twitter. How does Google filter all my Gmail spam? So far I've had one or two emails go through in all these years and my account is available in several leaks, receiving tens of spam mails a day. And email seems like a harder place to police, being decentralized. These guys control the gateway to the service!
crankylinuxuser 8y ago
Or, you can spend human time to review a decision like "Delete account with known good history", rather than the current SV trend of 'automate it, fuck it, who cares? We'll wait until someone complains on HN or Reddit' The first rule is you don't delete user data without consent. The second rule, is you dont delete user data without consent! And yes, I work in the industry. Bad shit happens, and data can be lost. But trusting some automated 'spam detection algo' and making actionable, irrecoverable decisions on fuzzy math is completely idiotic, boneheaded, and fucking stupid! If you're in that product team, you deserve every shred of scorn you're getting.
- kbenson 8y ago
  > the current SV trend of 'automate it, fuck it, who cares? I think some of the reason this comes about is that it's deprioritized until it's a major problem, and you're already at a large scale, and then the decision is "require human review, even of what appears to be a fraction of the deletions, and get swamped with thousands or tends of thousands of reviews immediately", or "just delete them". That's not an excuse for the decision, since obviously they could have taken care to address this problem at least minimally much earlier, and there wouldn't be a deluge of work, but I think we all understand whey they weren't keen to do that (even if it's a crap decision for their users).

by modsec 8y ago

Rjevski 8y ago

Any of the open-source email spam filters? Not saying they’re excellent by any means but they’d at least take care of the most obvious spam there is. False positives can be dealt with appeals - allow people to actually appeal the decision and get a human to review it. I’d take the occasional false positive with a proper appeals system any day over the current cesspool that is Twitter.

modsec 8y ago
Like what? SpamAssassin? You would be surprised how much obvious spam gets through it in the face of the kind of spam onslaught that goes on in the real world today. Seriously, this problem is not as easy to solve for machines as you think it is.
- kaoD 8y ago
  Well, they're Twitter. How does Google filter all my Gmail spam? So far I've had one or two emails go through in all these years and my account is available in several leaks, receiving tens of spam mails a day. And email seems like a harder place to police, being decentralized. These guys control the gateway to the service!

crankylinuxuser 8y ago

Or, you can spend human time to review a decision like "Delete account with known good history", rather than the current SV trend of 'automate it, fuck it, who cares? We'll wait until someone complains on HN or Reddit' The first rule is you don't delete user data without consent. The second rule, is you dont delete user data without consent! And yes, I work in the industry. Bad shit happens, and data can be lost. But trusting some automated 'spam detection algo' and making actionable, irrecoverable decisions on fuzzy math is completely idiotic, boneheaded, and fucking stupid! If you're in that product team, you deserve every shred of scorn you're getting.

kbenson 8y ago
> the current SV trend of 'automate it, fuck it, who cares? I think some of the reason this comes about is that it's deprioritized until it's a major problem, and you're already at a large scale, and then the decision is "require human review, even of what appears to be a fraction of the deletions, and get swamped with thousands or tends of thousands of reviews immediately", or "just delete them". That's not an excuse for the decision, since obviously they could have taken care to address this problem at least minimally much earlier, and there wouldn't be a deluge of work, but I think we all understand whey they weren't keen to do that (even if it's a crap decision for their users).