3 ms·

Even so, we still need to have a debate about what levels of "papieren bitte" we are willing to accept for different functions of society. The currently ubiquit

by klabb3 5y ago

Even so, we still need to have a debate about what levels of "papieren bitte" we are willing to accept for different functions of society. The currently ubiquitous corporate-centric trend is to "nudge" instead of outright ban, i.e. instead of a bool it's numeric, and I highly doubt that the difference in data type is as significant as people think it is -- "Well you can always create a new account/buy another device/ask your friend to do it/.." and so on. If these numeric scores are affecting search results, recommendations, when sharing stuff, etc etc, there's no question that it will affect societal discourse. These hidden "algorithms" (as in the popular term) and fraud prevention systems are so far from being understood that it may be too late to reverse it when we realize what's happened.

eru 5y ago
"Papiere, bitte." (Just fyi. Mangling the German [sic] doesn't detract from your post.) Not sure being corporate centric makes this problem any worse? If you had other kinds of organisation, you'd still have to deal with abuse and fraud? Any people doing weird, unusual stuff, look inherently more suspicious. That's a fact of life in meatspace, too. There might be some utopian, ideal way to organise activity so that non-mainstream stuff ain't suspicious. But I would count that as a great feature of that ideal way; not as a deficiency in the corporate way. Just because this deficiency of the corporate way seems to be a common deficiency of most means of organisation that have been tried. (Keep in mind, this isn't all or nothing. Softening the tendency might be enough of a relief, without having to eliminate it completely.)
- klabb3 5y ago
  > "Papiere, bitte." (Just fyi. Mangling the German [sic] doesn't detract from your post.) Thanks! > Not sure being corporate centric makes this problem any worse? If you had other kinds of organisation, you'd still have to deal with abuse and fraud? I think it's definitely not unique to big corps, but an emergent property of a distributed and homogenous system of self interested agents, probably. It feels very game theoretical, at least. What's clear is these systems are becoming ubiquitous rapidly. Anyway, if my Google account gets locked today, for whatever reason, I am very seriously screwed. Google's human appeal process is best-effort at best, I know people personally who have been locked out for life. Now, I have the luxury to blame myself because I should have bought a domain and so on, but society at large doesn't have that foresight/insight.
  - eru 5y ago
    > I think it's definitely not unique to big corps, but an emergent property of a distributed and homogenous system of self interested agents, probably. It feels very game theoretical, at least. What's clear is these systems are becoming ubiquitous rapidly. Not sure the homogenity is necessary? To an extent, the market delivers what people are demanding. For most people, Google's package of cheap or even free services with minimal hassle in the common case, but almost no recourse in bad cases, is compelling. And for many it's a step up from having everything locally: I'd bet that more people lose their local data than get locked out of Google?
    - klabb3 5y ago
      > Not sure the homogenity is necessary? Oh, nice catch, I actually meant to write heterogeneous. > I'd bet that more people lose their local data than get locked out of Google? Probably. There's definitely some low hanging fruit/middle ground though. We desperately need to have ownership of the address itself, so we can transfer to different providers. Either with your own domain, or a domain provided by a truly neutral party, similar to phone numbers.
      - eru 5y ago
        Not sure about phone numbers. You can get them hijacked relatively easily, at least temporarily.
makeitdouble 5y ago
I agree with you. I think this discussion started around the time shadowbanning was gradually used on forums to reduce moderation workload. It seemed somewhat legitimate for a small free to use site mods to try to not get their whole life sunk by dealing with trolls, but if the same behavior is applied to giant entities who have much more incentives to do it at scale, it becomes a different issue altogether. Hidden restrictions on search results or other functionalities would be distopian and something I hope doesn’t get accepted as standard.

by klabb3 5y ago

eru 5y ago

"Papiere, bitte." (Just fyi. Mangling the German [sic] doesn't detract from your post.) Not sure being corporate centric makes this problem any worse? If you had other kinds of organisation, you'd still have to deal with abuse and fraud? Any people doing weird, unusual stuff, look inherently more suspicious. That's a fact of life in meatspace, too. There might be some utopian, ideal way to organise activity so that non-mainstream stuff ain't suspicious. But I would count that as a great feature of that ideal way; not as a deficiency in the corporate way. Just because this deficiency of the corporate way seems to be a common deficiency of most means of organisation that have been tried. (Keep in mind, this isn't all or nothing. Softening the tendency might be enough of a relief, without having to eliminate it completely.)

klabb3 5y ago
> "Papiere, bitte." (Just fyi. Mangling the German [sic] doesn't detract from your post.) Thanks! > Not sure being corporate centric makes this problem any worse? If you had other kinds of organisation, you'd still have to deal with abuse and fraud? I think it's definitely not unique to big corps, but an emergent property of a distributed and homogenous system of self interested agents, probably. It feels very game theoretical, at least. What's clear is these systems are becoming ubiquitous rapidly. Anyway, if my Google account gets locked today, for whatever reason, I am very seriously screwed. Google's human appeal process is best-effort at best, I know people personally who have been locked out for life. Now, I have the luxury to blame myself because I should have bought a domain and so on, but society at large doesn't have that foresight/insight.
- eru 5y ago
  > I think it's definitely not unique to big corps, but an emergent property of a distributed and homogenous system of self interested agents, probably. It feels very game theoretical, at least. What's clear is these systems are becoming ubiquitous rapidly. Not sure the homogenity is necessary? To an extent, the market delivers what people are demanding. For most people, Google's package of cheap or even free services with minimal hassle in the common case, but almost no recourse in bad cases, is compelling. And for many it's a step up from having everything locally: I'd bet that more people lose their local data than get locked out of Google?
  - klabb3 5y ago
    > Not sure the homogenity is necessary? Oh, nice catch, I actually meant to write heterogeneous. > I'd bet that more people lose their local data than get locked out of Google? Probably. There's definitely some low hanging fruit/middle ground though. We desperately need to have ownership of the address itself, so we can transfer to different providers. Either with your own domain, or a domain provided by a truly neutral party, similar to phone numbers.
    - eru 5y ago
      Not sure about phone numbers. You can get them hijacked relatively easily, at least temporarily.

makeitdouble 5y ago

I agree with you. I think this discussion started around the time shadowbanning was gradually used on forums to reduce moderation workload. It seemed somewhat legitimate for a small free to use site mods to try to not get their whole life sunk by dealing with trolls, but if the same behavior is applied to giant entities who have much more incentives to do it at scale, it becomes a different issue altogether. Hidden restrictions on search results or other functionalities would be distopian and something I hope doesn’t get accepted as standard.