4 ms·

Are you actually deaf? Or is lying to get exceptions that are meant for the disabled actually legal?

Skunkleton 8y ago
I am fairly certain that it isn't generally illegal to lie to people. Maybe a little shitty, but isn't it shitty to not let people unsubscribe from a service in the same manner they signed up?
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  This isn't just lying though, it sounds closer to fraud to me (lying go receive services you otherwise wouldn't). It also sounds a bit like parking in the disabled section. And I don't know if there are legal ramifications for using services that are for the disabled but I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
  - c3534l 8y ago
    Parking in a handicapped spot takes resources away from people who need it. This gets around an unethical business practice designed to charge money from people who no longer agree to receive services.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      > Parking in a handicapped spot takes resources away from people who need it. And this one does the same? Who says that guy going through the emails for isn't otherwise going to be helping someone who is actually deaf? > This gets around an unethical business practice designed to charge money from people who no longer agree to receive services. This sounds like the most legitimate argument here, if this is indeed unethical. Not sure what my stance is on this.
      - moate 8y ago
        This is not a zero sum equation though. Responding to emails requires FEWER resources relative to having a service representative on a phone call. It creates a more efficient process, which is exactly why subscription based services don't want to do it. Friction in the cancellation process is desirable, because people won't put up with it and will stay with the service longer. From- Someone who works in billing for a SaaS company.
  - rspeer 8y ago
    It's not like that at all, because it encourages more services for people with disabilities, instead of taking them away. Every site should be more prepared to accommodate people who can't or don't want to talk on the phone.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      > It's not like that at all, because it encourages more services for people with disabilities, instead of taking them away. I mean you could argue the same for parking right? If everyone parked in the disabled section then you'd encourage having more such parking. And this also requires paying a representative more hours to deal with emails etc. It's not like there's zero cost.
      - striking 8y ago
        They could use a thing called a website to help people do it automatically, which probably costs them less than the IVR or human rep on the phone. They just don't want that. Because they don't want you to cancel.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        I'm not saying what they want is good, I'm asking if what you (or OP rather) want is legal.
        cyphar 8y ago
        In most cases (private parking lots) it isn't illegal to take a disabled parking space. The fines a private company levies against you don't have any merit (though of course they can refuse you entry and sue you for damages or whatever). Parking spaces on public roads is a separate issue, and it's more in line with driving in a bus-only lane (technically illegal but it is because you need a particular permit -- so it requires more than just being disabled). My point is that your are jumping the gun with discussions of legality here. The litmus test should be wheter it's shitty to lie about a disability in order to cut through reselling bullshit. Other commentors have more than adequately covered this topic though.
  - ChristianGeek 8y ago
    More like pooping in a handicap stall.
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    Or walking up a sidewalk ramp, or using the headphone jack at the ATM, or using the handicapped stall in the bathroom, or taking the elevator instead of the stairs...
    - WillPostForFood 8y ago
      If you use the handicap stall in the bathroom because you like the extra space, and then handicapped person comes in who actually needs the rails, and can’t use them, isn’t that a bad thing?
      - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
        Sometimes the bathroom is busy, and everybody gets to wait for a stall. Its not the end of the world.
      - pavel_lishin 8y ago
        Sure, just like taking an elevator to the 2nd floor because you don't want to take the stairs.
      - SerLava 8y ago
        Not really. Handicap bathroom stalls are never handicap exclusive. Sometimes there isn't even a second, non handicap stall. It isn't like parking, because 99.9% of the time, it's in and out in a couple minutes, and 100% of the time you are physically present in the stall. But if you take the only parking spot, that person pretty much has to go home. The car could be there for hours, even the whole day. Versus two minutes. This huge moral difference is accurately reflected in the law- it is absolutely, perfectly legal to use a handicap stall without a disability.
  - Skunkleton 8y ago
    So I didn't downarrow you, but I think I can explain why you have been. You are conflating morality with law. Law can be amoral, and illegal actions can be moral.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Weird, because I thought everything I said was about the legality aspect, at least until other people suddenly started bringing ethics and morality into the discussion. Am I wrong about this?
      - elm-tree- 8y ago
        Bringing up such a minor illegality implies you care about the morality of it. If somebody was speeding and I said “hey, you know speeding is illegal right?” they would rightfully think I have some sort of weird moral problem with speeding.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        > Bringing up such a minor illegality implies you care about the morality of it. If somebody was speeding and I said “hey, you know speeding is illegal right?” they would rightfully think I have some sort of weird moral problem with speeding. Huh... that's actually very much the opposite of how I would interpret that sentence, but okay.
        Skunkleton 8y ago
        Maybe this is presumptive of me, but you should consider not just the the words you say, but also their implication. Most other people will, and if you don't you can't communicate effectively.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        I thought we just concluded that the problem is that we come to different conclusions about what the implications actually are, not that I didn't consider the implications? When someone asks me if I know something is illegal, to me, it seems they are being quite explicit that they are talking about legality and not morality, since otherwise they could tell me that that something is not cool, not that it's not legal. To me this is obvious, but maybe everyone else finds this strange and this is evidence that I just think weirdly, I don't know. But either way it's certainly not that I don't try to think in the first place.
13of40 8y ago
"I'm hard of hearing." Prove that I'm not. At that point it's one dark pattern against another.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  > "I'm hard of hearing." Prove that I'm not. At that point it's one dark pattern against another. First of all, he said "deaf", not "hard of hearing". Second ̶o̶n̶e̶, so you're fine with lying to get services you otherwise wouldn't if no one can actualy prove you're lying?
  - thelastidiot 8y ago
    Profound question: can you act unethically against unethical people?
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Yes? I don't see what's profound about this.
  - moftz 8y ago
    Even though it is a lie, it is a lie that is for the greater good. Maybe the company will realize how much time their call center employees are wasting filling out cancellation forms for the deaf and instead just make the form available online. They might lose some customers that might have stayed had a retention agent gave them free HBO for the month but there might be less time wasted on the phones with customers threatening to leave in exchange for free HBO. Either way, only people serious about leaving will leave and the call center will have less call volume and save the company money. In many areas, Comcast is the monopoly. You either have your TV or internet from them or you have nothing. If customers want to leave, then Comcast needs to react to the market and figure out what they are doing wrong.
  - s73v3r_ 8y ago
    "Second one, so you're fine with lying to get services you otherwise wouldn't if no one can actualy prove you're lying?" When it comes to them being dishonest about forcing me to call in order to endure a pitch to upsell me? Absolutely.
projectramo 8y ago
Excellent point! People with fully functioning hearing should have to sit through 2 hours of comcast customer service trying to cancel their service. Only the lucky people who have handicaps should be able to easily cancel their subscriptions. When you sign a subscription, no one promised it would be easy to get out of it. They're lucky not to have to pay a cancellation fee.
- colejohnson66 8y ago
  Is this sarcasm?
pavel_lishin 8y ago
> exceptions that are meant for the disabled The cool thing about disability accommodations is that they're also super handy for the able-bodied, too.
- wlesieutre 8y ago
  For example: closed captioning on multiple TVs or in loud rooms; curb cuts for people pushing strollers, walking bicycles, using walkers, or pushing shopping carts. Not the intended purpose, but making things more accessible made them more better for everyone. I'm not super up on the history of computer dictation and voice control but I'm pretty sure some of that was driven for use by people with mobility limits that kept them from using a keyboard and mouse. Now we all have voice controlled virtual assistants.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
AznHisoka 8y ago
"exceptions that are meant for the disabled " Since when was the ability to cancel something online meant for the disabled? Either you or a loved one is disabled, and that's why you're so sensitive (if so, I cut you some slack). Otherwise, I have no clue why you're throwing such a hiss about this. Many businesses (like cable companies) are being complete assholes by making it hard for you to cancel their service. Sometimes you have to lie and act unethically to get back at people like that. Hey, you wouldn't have to if they were ethical in the first place! They started this whole prisoner's dilemma! Me? I would love to cooperate and be honest all the time!
- NullPrefix 8y ago
  If more people do this, the scammers may stop supporting this workflow and force deaf users to get their friends to call.
  - mynameisvlad 8y ago
    Wouldn't that actually be illegal? Deafness is a medical condition and I doubt "get a friend to do it" would be a suitable accomodation.
    - NullPrefix 8y ago
      >Our workplace is illiterate, thus we cannot process your emails.
      - mynameisvlad 8y ago
        That excuse isn't going to fly when they get sued for not accommodating a disability. If anything, it'll cause a lawyer to pounce on the case like there's no tomorrow.
        Zhenya 8y ago
        Pretty sure the grandparent comment was missing a /s
harryh 8y ago
I did think about this, but I don't really think I'm taking anything away from the actually deaf. It's not like a parking space where if I park in it, then it's unavailable for a handicapped person. There's someone's job to handle these requests and they have a limitless capacity. If anything, it actually takes less company man hours to respond to an asynchronous email request than a synchronous phone request. I agree that it does feel a slight bit scummy, but after thinking about it I decided that I was OK with it. I can see how some others might think differently though.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  Finally! It's nice to see an attempt at a level-headed response, and from the person it was actually directed to (and that you had actually put thought into this). Funny enough, though, no one's actually answered the question I actually asked, which I still have... which is whether this is legal?
  - harryh 8y ago
    I'm pretty sure that lying about a disability to a company you have bought a product from is not illegal. But I guess I don't know for sure. I'm willing to take the risk.
  - kstrauser 8y ago
    No, it's not illegal. First, under the ADA they can't actually ask you to verify any disabilities: that's between you and your doctor. Second, you don't have to be explicitly diagnosed as having a disability to have one. I've been to too many concerts over the years, and while no doctor has diagnosed me, I can truthfully say I have a hard time understanding people over bad phone connections.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      > First, under the ADA they can't actually ask you to verify any disabilities: that's between you and your doctor. Wow, that's interesting. They can't even require a doctor's certification of some sort (without any details)? How does that work for companies that give discounts (say) to the disabled? Can everybody lie to get them legally then? This doesn't sound right. (Note that it doesn't have to necessarily be the ADA outlawing this, so I wouldn't just rely on that.) > Second, you don't have to be explicitly diagnosed as having a disability to have one. Do you mean to have one medically or legally? The former is obvious to me but the latter isn't.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
vernie 8y ago
I always check HN when I want a snitch's perspective.
- dang 8y ago
  Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a ton, and we ban accounts that do this repeatedly.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dang 8y ago
Please don't take HN on off-topic flamewar tangents. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466555 and marked it off-topic.
- mehrdadn 8y ago
  dang, could I ask you to review and provide some feedback on your evaluation? I'm very confused at your comment. I was asking if the parent was in fact referring to lying, and if so, whether this was legal. This was a direct response to the parent comment's suggestion that consumers like us should lie on the phone. How is my comment off-topic when I was directly asking about the legality of the parent comment's advice? It seems to me that it was as on-topic as any comment on that suggestion could be. I'm also confused at your flamewar comment. I saw that people were keen to challenge me on the morality aspect, but it was not what I was actually objecting to or taking the discussion on -- I was asking about the legality. If you look and see where the OP himself finally responded to my question [1], we had quite a nice discussion on that very topic that even got upvotes with no objections so far as I could see (but do let me know if you see otherwise). How this a flamewar, when we had a nice and civil conversation on the exact subject I inquired about? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466984
  - dang 8y ago
    Probably I just misread your intent. It seemed off-topic and the sort of accusatory nitpicking that users vent on each other when they're feeling flamey. If that wasn't what you meant, I'm sorry I got it wrong! Moderation is guesswork. We try as hard as we can to guess right, but definitely still get it wrong sometimes.
    - mehrdadn 8y ago
      Yeah, unfortunately not. I meant 100% literally what I wrote as you see there, which was figuring out if the advice to lie like this was actually legal (and I had to confirm they were actually suggesting to lie, since it wasn't clear to me and otherwise the question would've been moot). It was a naturally succinct question so I left it like that instead of trying to worry about actively dispelling anything else people might read into it, but I guess that was a bad idea. It's fine though, thank you for clarifying.

I am fairly certain that it isn't generally illegal to lie to people. Maybe a little shitty, but isn't it shitty to not let people unsubscribe from a service in the same manner they signed up?

mehrdadn 8y ago
This isn't just lying though, it sounds closer to fraud to me (lying go receive services you otherwise wouldn't). It also sounds a bit like parking in the disabled section. And I don't know if there are legal ramifications for using services that are for the disabled but I wouldn't be surprised if there were.
- c3534l 8y ago
  Parking in a handicapped spot takes resources away from people who need it. This gets around an unethical business practice designed to charge money from people who no longer agree to receive services.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > Parking in a handicapped spot takes resources away from people who need it. And this one does the same? Who says that guy going through the emails for isn't otherwise going to be helping someone who is actually deaf? > This gets around an unethical business practice designed to charge money from people who no longer agree to receive services. This sounds like the most legitimate argument here, if this is indeed unethical. Not sure what my stance is on this.
    - moate 8y ago
      This is not a zero sum equation though. Responding to emails requires FEWER resources relative to having a service representative on a phone call. It creates a more efficient process, which is exactly why subscription based services don't want to do it. Friction in the cancellation process is desirable, because people won't put up with it and will stay with the service longer. From- Someone who works in billing for a SaaS company.
- rspeer 8y ago
  It's not like that at all, because it encourages more services for people with disabilities, instead of taking them away. Every site should be more prepared to accommodate people who can't or don't want to talk on the phone.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > It's not like that at all, because it encourages more services for people with disabilities, instead of taking them away. I mean you could argue the same for parking right? If everyone parked in the disabled section then you'd encourage having more such parking. And this also requires paying a representative more hours to deal with emails etc. It's not like there's zero cost.
    - striking 8y ago
      They could use a thing called a website to help people do it automatically, which probably costs them less than the IVR or human rep on the phone. They just don't want that. Because they don't want you to cancel.
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        I'm not saying what they want is good, I'm asking if what you (or OP rather) want is legal.
        cyphar 8y ago
        In most cases (private parking lots) it isn't illegal to take a disabled parking space. The fines a private company levies against you don't have any merit (though of course they can refuse you entry and sue you for damages or whatever). Parking spaces on public roads is a separate issue, and it's more in line with driving in a bus-only lane (technically illegal but it is because you need a particular permit -- so it requires more than just being disabled). My point is that your are jumping the gun with discussions of legality here. The litmus test should be wheter it's shitty to lie about a disability in order to cut through reselling bullshit. Other commentors have more than adequately covered this topic though.
- ChristianGeek 8y ago
  More like pooping in a handicap stall.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  Or walking up a sidewalk ramp, or using the headphone jack at the ATM, or using the handicapped stall in the bathroom, or taking the elevator instead of the stairs...
  - WillPostForFood 8y ago
    If you use the handicap stall in the bathroom because you like the extra space, and then handicapped person comes in who actually needs the rails, and can’t use them, isn’t that a bad thing?
    - JoeAltmaier 8y ago
      Sometimes the bathroom is busy, and everybody gets to wait for a stall. Its not the end of the world.
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      Sure, just like taking an elevator to the 2nd floor because you don't want to take the stairs.
    - SerLava 8y ago
      Not really. Handicap bathroom stalls are never handicap exclusive. Sometimes there isn't even a second, non handicap stall. It isn't like parking, because 99.9% of the time, it's in and out in a couple minutes, and 100% of the time you are physically present in the stall. But if you take the only parking spot, that person pretty much has to go home. The car could be there for hours, even the whole day. Versus two minutes. This huge moral difference is accurately reflected in the law- it is absolutely, perfectly legal to use a handicap stall without a disability.
- Skunkleton 8y ago
  So I didn't downarrow you, but I think I can explain why you have been. You are conflating morality with law. Law can be amoral, and illegal actions can be moral.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Weird, because I thought everything I said was about the legality aspect, at least until other people suddenly started bringing ethics and morality into the discussion. Am I wrong about this?
    - elm-tree- 8y ago
      Bringing up such a minor illegality implies you care about the morality of it. If somebody was speeding and I said “hey, you know speeding is illegal right?” they would rightfully think I have some sort of weird moral problem with speeding.
      - mehrdadn 8y ago
        > Bringing up such a minor illegality implies you care about the morality of it. If somebody was speeding and I said “hey, you know speeding is illegal right?” they would rightfully think I have some sort of weird moral problem with speeding. Huh... that's actually very much the opposite of how I would interpret that sentence, but okay.
        Skunkleton 8y ago
        Maybe this is presumptive of me, but you should consider not just the the words you say, but also their implication. Most other people will, and if you don't you can't communicate effectively.
        mehrdadn 8y ago
        I thought we just concluded that the problem is that we come to different conclusions about what the implications actually are, not that I didn't consider the implications? When someone asks me if I know something is illegal, to me, it seems they are being quite explicit that they are talking about legality and not morality, since otherwise they could tell me that that something is not cool, not that it's not legal. To me this is obvious, but maybe everyone else finds this strange and this is evidence that I just think weirdly, I don't know. But either way it's certainly not that I don't try to think in the first place.

13of40 8y ago

"I'm hard of hearing." Prove that I'm not. At that point it's one dark pattern against another.

mehrdadn 8y ago
> "I'm hard of hearing." Prove that I'm not. At that point it's one dark pattern against another. First of all, he said "deaf", not "hard of hearing". Second ̶o̶n̶e̶, so you're fine with lying to get services you otherwise wouldn't if no one can actualy prove you're lying?
- thelastidiot 8y ago
  Profound question: can you act unethically against unethical people?
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Yes? I don't see what's profound about this.
- moftz 8y ago
  Even though it is a lie, it is a lie that is for the greater good. Maybe the company will realize how much time their call center employees are wasting filling out cancellation forms for the deaf and instead just make the form available online. They might lose some customers that might have stayed had a retention agent gave them free HBO for the month but there might be less time wasted on the phones with customers threatening to leave in exchange for free HBO. Either way, only people serious about leaving will leave and the call center will have less call volume and save the company money. In many areas, Comcast is the monopoly. You either have your TV or internet from them or you have nothing. If customers want to leave, then Comcast needs to react to the market and figure out what they are doing wrong.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "Second one, so you're fine with lying to get services you otherwise wouldn't if no one can actualy prove you're lying?" When it comes to them being dishonest about forcing me to call in order to endure a pitch to upsell me? Absolutely.

projectramo 8y ago

Excellent point! People with fully functioning hearing should have to sit through 2 hours of comcast customer service trying to cancel their service. Only the lucky people who have handicaps should be able to easily cancel their subscriptions. When you sign a subscription, no one promised it would be easy to get out of it. They're lucky not to have to pay a cancellation fee.

colejohnson66 8y ago
Is this sarcasm?

pavel_lishin 8y ago

> exceptions that are meant for the disabled The cool thing about disability accommodations is that they're also super handy for the able-bodied, too.

wlesieutre 8y ago
For example: closed captioning on multiple TVs or in loud rooms; curb cuts for people pushing strollers, walking bicycles, using walkers, or pushing shopping carts. Not the intended purpose, but making things more accessible made them more better for everyone. I'm not super up on the history of computer dictation and voice control but I'm pretty sure some of that was driven for use by people with mobility limits that kept them from using a keyboard and mouse. Now we all have voice controlled virtual assistants.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

AznHisoka 8y ago

"exceptions that are meant for the disabled " Since when was the ability to cancel something online meant for the disabled? Either you or a loved one is disabled, and that's why you're so sensitive (if so, I cut you some slack). Otherwise, I have no clue why you're throwing such a hiss about this. Many businesses (like cable companies) are being complete assholes by making it hard for you to cancel their service. Sometimes you have to lie and act unethically to get back at people like that. Hey, you wouldn't have to if they were ethical in the first place! They started this whole prisoner's dilemma! Me? I would love to cooperate and be honest all the time!

NullPrefix 8y ago
If more people do this, the scammers may stop supporting this workflow and force deaf users to get their friends to call.
- mynameisvlad 8y ago
  Wouldn't that actually be illegal? Deafness is a medical condition and I doubt "get a friend to do it" would be a suitable accomodation.
  - NullPrefix 8y ago
    >Our workplace is illiterate, thus we cannot process your emails.
    - mynameisvlad 8y ago
      That excuse isn't going to fly when they get sued for not accommodating a disability. If anything, it'll cause a lawyer to pounce on the case like there's no tomorrow.
      - Zhenya 8y ago
        Pretty sure the grandparent comment was missing a /s

harryh 8y ago

I did think about this, but I don't really think I'm taking anything away from the actually deaf. It's not like a parking space where if I park in it, then it's unavailable for a handicapped person. There's someone's job to handle these requests and they have a limitless capacity. If anything, it actually takes less company man hours to respond to an asynchronous email request than a synchronous phone request. I agree that it does feel a slight bit scummy, but after thinking about it I decided that I was OK with it. I can see how some others might think differently though.

mehrdadn 8y ago
Finally! It's nice to see an attempt at a level-headed response, and from the person it was actually directed to (and that you had actually put thought into this). Funny enough, though, no one's actually answered the question I actually asked, which I still have... which is whether this is legal?
- harryh 8y ago
  I'm pretty sure that lying about a disability to a company you have bought a product from is not illegal. But I guess I don't know for sure. I'm willing to take the risk.
- kstrauser 8y ago
  No, it's not illegal. First, under the ADA they can't actually ask you to verify any disabilities: that's between you and your doctor. Second, you don't have to be explicitly diagnosed as having a disability to have one. I've been to too many concerts over the years, and while no doctor has diagnosed me, I can truthfully say I have a hard time understanding people over bad phone connections.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    > First, under the ADA they can't actually ask you to verify any disabilities: that's between you and your doctor. Wow, that's interesting. They can't even require a doctor's certification of some sort (without any details)? How does that work for companies that give discounts (say) to the disabled? Can everybody lie to get them legally then? This doesn't sound right. (Note that it doesn't have to necessarily be the ADA outlawing this, so I wouldn't just rely on that.) > Second, you don't have to be explicitly diagnosed as having a disability to have one. Do you mean to have one medically or legally? The former is obvious to me but the latter isn't.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

vernie 8y ago

I always check HN when I want a snitch's perspective.

dang 8y ago
Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News? You've done it a ton, and we ban accounts that do this repeatedly.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dang 8y ago

Please don't take HN on off-topic flamewar tangents. This is in the site guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466555 and marked it off-topic.

mehrdadn 8y ago
dang, could I ask you to review and provide some feedback on your evaluation? I'm very confused at your comment. I was asking if the parent was in fact referring to lying, and if so, whether this was legal. This was a direct response to the parent comment's suggestion that consumers like us should lie on the phone. How is my comment off-topic when I was directly asking about the legality of the parent comment's advice? It seems to me that it was as on-topic as any comment on that suggestion could be. I'm also confused at your flamewar comment. I saw that people were keen to challenge me on the morality aspect, but it was not what I was actually objecting to or taking the discussion on -- I was asking about the legality. If you look and see where the OP himself finally responded to my question [1], we had quite a nice discussion on that very topic that even got upvotes with no objections so far as I could see (but do let me know if you see otherwise). How this a flamewar, when we had a nice and civil conversation on the exact subject I inquired about? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17466984
- dang 8y ago
  Probably I just misread your intent. It seemed off-topic and the sort of accusatory nitpicking that users vent on each other when they're feeling flamey. If that wasn't what you meant, I'm sorry I got it wrong! Moderation is guesswork. We try as hard as we can to guess right, but definitely still get it wrong sometimes.
  - mehrdadn 8y ago
    Yeah, unfortunately not. I meant 100% literally what I wrote as you see there, which was figuring out if the advice to lie like this was actually legal (and I had to confirm they were actually suggesting to lie, since it wasn't clear to me and otherwise the question would've been moot). It was a naturally succinct question so I left it like that instead of trying to worry about actively dispelling anything else people might read into it, but I guess that was a bad idea. It's fine though, thank you for clarifying.