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> Github not providing reasoning is also unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help with liability?). Possibly liability, but

> Github not providing reasoning is also unfair, but seems to be standard practice among corporations (maybe to help with liability?). Possibly liability, but also to keep people from gaming the system. Hard policy lines about exactly what is and is not okay end up being gamed by people that technically don't violate them but cause all the same problems that the policy was instituted to stop.[1] If the reasoning for the ban is explicitly laid out, but the person doesn't quite meet it through definitive evidence (but possibly easily meets it through a preponderance of circumstantial evidence), that's may indicate someone is gaming the rules. Acting on that person in that case may just lead to a bunch of bad press as people argue over whether it was justified. It's in the company's interest to keep it vague so a defense of that sort is harder to put forth. That's not to say I think this is necessarily good, just that I can see how it came to be somewhat the norm. In a better world, we'd have something more like the legal system, with a case, a defense and offense, an a jury of peers. Unfortunately, that's too time consuming, resource intensive, expensive, and takes control away from the business, so it will never happen. 1: This is easy to do. For example, continuously make statements that are construed as attacks by the group you are targeting, but are less known as attacks outside that group, and feign ignorance when called on it. It polarizes those around, and also causes the targets to become hyper-sensitive to benign statements and causes false-positives, which is more evidence to others that the same group is overreacting, causing more polarization. Open source communities have been ripped apart by this. America seems to be getting ripped apart by this.

leggomylibro 7y ago
Yeah, having sat on the other side of this, it seems like most "policy" teams believe that publishing hard guidelines will encourage people to maliciously toe the lines, like children playing the "I'm not touching you" game during long car rides. There's no good solution, because people aren't good. If you want to make someone a cynic for life, have them moderate a random social media website for a few days.
ballenf 7y ago
> keep people from gaming the system When the system is there to protect the company, I understand this position. When it's a system forced on them by law, I really don't think playing games with their users serves any reasonable purpose. Laws should be black and white and people "toeing the line" should be treated no differently beyond verifying that they are indeed on one side or the other. I get that the law puts the onus on companies to verify compliance and that creates an incentive for companies to draw an artificially strict rule of their own. Nevertheless I think it's important to keep the distinction between a company acting as the police and a company that has a policy serving its own interests. When you're the police you don't get to hide the evidence or the charge against the person you've arrested at least in free countries.
- kbenson 7y ago
  > Laws should be black and white Laws are almost never black and white when put into practice, because that's not justice. There are plenty of times extenuating circumstances change how laws are applied by judges and by juries, and that's how it should be, because the law can never accurately portray every possible situation in real life, even if the lawmakers would have wanted an exception for that circumstance. That's why there's talk about the "spirit of the law", which is meant to convey what the law attempts to do. > I get that the law puts the onus on companies to verify compliance and that creates an incentive for companies to draw an artificially strict rule of their own. As soon as you shift responsibility to a company, they are going to do the thing that's best for them, whether that be thr cheapest, easiest to defend, or best to drive more business. That's their incentive structure, they will apply that to anything they are told to do. No point in us getting mad about it, if we don't want that incentive applied to the problem, don't make companies responsible for it (there are other solutions, such as implementing a tax that's used by third partied for reviewing cases, or any number of other things). > When you're the police you don't get to hide the evidence or the charge against the person you've arrested at least in free countries. You don't when there's a court. But without a requirement for a court, sure you do. If it's not a court, such as with state and federal fines, I think often it's down to whether the statutes give you ways to dispute something, and otherwise if it somehow infringes on your rights. I'm not sure being told you aren't allowed to use a company's service infringes on your rights, as they generally reserve the right to refuse service.
- msla 7y ago
  > Laws should be black and white and people "toeing the line" should be treated no differently beyond verifying that they are indeed on one side or the other. There are some laws for which this will never be the case: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-... > In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an infringement. > So what is a “transformative” use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general guidelines and varied court decisions, because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition. Like free speech, they wanted it to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation. Yes, that means that any of the "rules" about things which are guaranteed to be Fair Use you were taught are wrong. The law doesn't work that way, it's designed to not work that way, and the courts will never be persuaded that it ought to work that way.

leggomylibro 7y ago

Yeah, having sat on the other side of this, it seems like most "policy" teams believe that publishing hard guidelines will encourage people to maliciously toe the lines, like children playing the "I'm not touching you" game during long car rides. There's no good solution, because people aren't good. If you want to make someone a cynic for life, have them moderate a random social media website for a few days.

ballenf 7y ago

> keep people from gaming the system When the system is there to protect the company, I understand this position. When it's a system forced on them by law, I really don't think playing games with their users serves any reasonable purpose. Laws should be black and white and people "toeing the line" should be treated no differently beyond verifying that they are indeed on one side or the other. I get that the law puts the onus on companies to verify compliance and that creates an incentive for companies to draw an artificially strict rule of their own. Nevertheless I think it's important to keep the distinction between a company acting as the police and a company that has a policy serving its own interests. When you're the police you don't get to hide the evidence or the charge against the person you've arrested at least in free countries.

kbenson 7y ago
> Laws should be black and white Laws are almost never black and white when put into practice, because that's not justice. There are plenty of times extenuating circumstances change how laws are applied by judges and by juries, and that's how it should be, because the law can never accurately portray every possible situation in real life, even if the lawmakers would have wanted an exception for that circumstance. That's why there's talk about the "spirit of the law", which is meant to convey what the law attempts to do. > I get that the law puts the onus on companies to verify compliance and that creates an incentive for companies to draw an artificially strict rule of their own. As soon as you shift responsibility to a company, they are going to do the thing that's best for them, whether that be thr cheapest, easiest to defend, or best to drive more business. That's their incentive structure, they will apply that to anything they are told to do. No point in us getting mad about it, if we don't want that incentive applied to the problem, don't make companies responsible for it (there are other solutions, such as implementing a tax that's used by third partied for reviewing cases, or any number of other things). > When you're the police you don't get to hide the evidence or the charge against the person you've arrested at least in free countries. You don't when there's a court. But without a requirement for a court, sure you do. If it's not a court, such as with state and federal fines, I think often it's down to whether the statutes give you ways to dispute something, and otherwise if it somehow infringes on your rights. I'm not sure being told you aren't allowed to use a company's service infringes on your rights, as they generally reserve the right to refuse service.
msla 7y ago
> Laws should be black and white and people "toeing the line" should be treated no differently beyond verifying that they are indeed on one side or the other. There are some laws for which this will never be the case: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-use/ https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/what-is-fair-... > In its most general sense, a fair use is any copying of copyrighted material done for a limited and “transformative” purpose, such as to comment upon, criticize, or parody a copyrighted work. Such uses can be done without permission from the copyright owner. In other words, fair use is a defense against a claim of copyright infringement. If your use qualifies as a fair use, then it would not be considered an infringement. > So what is a “transformative” use? If this definition seems ambiguous or vague, be aware that millions of dollars in legal fees have been spent attempting to define what qualifies as a fair use. There are no hard-and-fast rules, only general guidelines and varied court decisions, because the judges and lawmakers who created the fair use exception did not want to limit its definition. Like free speech, they wanted it to have an expansive meaning that could be open to interpretation. Yes, that means that any of the "rules" about things which are guaranteed to be Fair Use you were taught are wrong. The law doesn't work that way, it's designed to not work that way, and the courts will never be persuaded that it ought to work that way.