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I'm not saying this was blatant censorship; but the overwhelming consensus in this thread of 'this is obviously a case of dozens of people hitting `mark as spam

by eof 15y ago

I'm not saying this was blatant censorship; but the overwhelming consensus in this thread of 'this is obviously a case of dozens of people hitting `mark as spam`' or some other coincidence is really surprising. Twitter blocked #occupywallst from trending; people switched to #takewallstreet and it was trending again. I don't see any really good reason to think of yahoo or internet in the USA as some bastion of freedom; especially when it can be 'blocked' by such murky means as a spam filter (plausible deniability allows people to act out just a bit more). Our government has shown again and again that it is willing to tap all our means of communication (to the point of potential constitutional infringement) and mega corps have been generally willing participants. To dismiss some phrase or website being manually dropped into a spam filter as an outrageous conspiracy theory makes me wonder if I am insane; because it's my perception these mega corps, banks, and government agencies will go to whatever extreme they can get away with; rather than up to some arbitrary point of what is 'right or wrong'; and this certainly seems like something they can get away with.

gavinlynch 15y ago
Not to put words in your mouth, but I am asking myself this question: Yahoo! and Twitter care enough about between 200-5,000 protestors marching on Wall Street to commit acts of censorship? Why? What does this accomplish for these companies? They're protecting the tight-knit oligarchy which they are a part of? I'm struggling to see why this would even be on Yahoo!'s radar.
- forensic 15y ago
  It's not Yahoo's radar. It's individual(s) who work for Yahoo that have their fingers on the censorship button and also happen to be part of a tight-knit oligarchy. Some New York government official phones up his old Harvard buddy at Yahoo and asks him for help in avoiding civil unrest and an outbreak of violence. In exchange he promises undying love and future favors. The Yahoo guy realizes he has plausible deniability and so is happy to indulge. How do you climb the status ladder in America? You do favors for powerful people. Who wants to avoid the scary possibility of a massive viral wall street protest that inspires the nation to rise up? Lots of powerful people. Powerful people are by definition capable of getting shit done and influencing others. This is why the cookie crumbles in their favor so often.
  - mseebach 15y ago
    In order to have plausible deniability, the guy at Yahoo has to have direct, personal access to ban this domain. This makes him an ops person. Pretty much anyone else needs to go through a chain to get anything like this into production, denying them deniability. If there's a conspiracy, it's an ops guy showing off to an oligarch friend. I don't see how any member of a thigh-knit oligarchy could get this done without leaving a trail that could get him fired for cause and publicly humiliated.
    - forensic 15y ago
      VP of whatever at Yahoo shoots an email to his pet nerd in ops and asks him to add a few domains to the spam filter. A list of 20 who personally spammed an angry customer. VP of whatever says, "Nerdbro please add these domains to the filter before noon. An angry advertiser wants immediate action on this before closing a big deal. By the way I've recommended you to the division head for that position. Thanks for helping me out on this." In the corporate world almost everything that happens has it's genesis in an exchange like this. If you need a citation: Robert B. Cialdini Awhile later there is some PR consequence to this decision. Some PR guy in yahoo goes to ops and asks what happened. Immediate answer: "they were mistakenly added to the spam filter." "how did thus mistake happen?" "its technical; and anyway I'm not authorized to reveal the workings of the filter because hackers/spammers want to know how it works. " PR guy: "say no more. I understand. I'll make sure to let the public know it was an accident"
- ShawnJG 15y ago
  both of you make excellent points, and either could be true. But the sad fact is, we've had so many examples of government and big corporations behaving so badly that distrust has become systemic in our society. If Yahoo's actions were intentional they were probably unsure of exact amount of protesters but were taking preventative measures. Could have been a tech mistake, possibly. But coupled with the fact that twitter was also actively blocking the same topic, it seems highly suspicious.
eli 15y ago
Yahoo's spam filtering is terrible and I know for a fact that they maintain a list of URLs that are blocked even if they're just mentioned in the body. Occam's Razor (not to mention Hanlon's Razor) suggest the issue is not deliberate.
- aidenn0 15y ago
  I have a yahoo mail account and I can confirm that their filtering is terrible. About 1 in 500 e-mails or so never make it to either my inbox or spam box, without any error going to the sender.
pbh 15y ago
Nobody seems to have picked up on the "external" spam filter part of the response. My guess is that Y! uses some somewhat dodgy external providers of spam/content filtering. Historically, external providers that block inappropriate sites have considered such lists to be their proprietary information, but when those lists have been revealed, they tend to have a pretty heavy political agenda. Peacefire has some reports that detail this: http://www.peacefire.org/ http://www.peacefire.org/ (So, I think the reason for the Y! block was likely an unaccountable third-party, but I think the Twitter block is pretty odd.)
- rsynnott 15y ago
  I'd be a little surprised if Yahoo uses third parties for spam filtering. The Twitter thing is no mystery, though; Twitter routinely hides controversial hashtags.
cpeterso 15y ago
Is Yahoo's spam filter really so quick to (automatically!) start filtering a very recent keyword (#occupywallst) based on just "dozens of people"?

by eof 15y ago

gavinlynch 15y ago

Not to put words in your mouth, but I am asking myself this question: Yahoo! and Twitter care enough about between 200-5,000 protestors marching on Wall Street to commit acts of censorship? Why? What does this accomplish for these companies? They're protecting the tight-knit oligarchy which they are a part of? I'm struggling to see why this would even be on Yahoo!'s radar.

forensic 15y ago
It's not Yahoo's radar. It's individual(s) who work for Yahoo that have their fingers on the censorship button and also happen to be part of a tight-knit oligarchy. Some New York government official phones up his old Harvard buddy at Yahoo and asks him for help in avoiding civil unrest and an outbreak of violence. In exchange he promises undying love and future favors. The Yahoo guy realizes he has plausible deniability and so is happy to indulge. How do you climb the status ladder in America? You do favors for powerful people. Who wants to avoid the scary possibility of a massive viral wall street protest that inspires the nation to rise up? Lots of powerful people. Powerful people are by definition capable of getting shit done and influencing others. This is why the cookie crumbles in their favor so often.
- mseebach 15y ago
  In order to have plausible deniability, the guy at Yahoo has to have direct, personal access to ban this domain. This makes him an ops person. Pretty much anyone else needs to go through a chain to get anything like this into production, denying them deniability. If there's a conspiracy, it's an ops guy showing off to an oligarch friend. I don't see how any member of a thigh-knit oligarchy could get this done without leaving a trail that could get him fired for cause and publicly humiliated.
  - forensic 15y ago
    VP of whatever at Yahoo shoots an email to his pet nerd in ops and asks him to add a few domains to the spam filter. A list of 20 who personally spammed an angry customer. VP of whatever says, "Nerdbro please add these domains to the filter before noon. An angry advertiser wants immediate action on this before closing a big deal. By the way I've recommended you to the division head for that position. Thanks for helping me out on this." In the corporate world almost everything that happens has it's genesis in an exchange like this. If you need a citation: Robert B. Cialdini Awhile later there is some PR consequence to this decision. Some PR guy in yahoo goes to ops and asks what happened. Immediate answer: "they were mistakenly added to the spam filter." "how did thus mistake happen?" "its technical; and anyway I'm not authorized to reveal the workings of the filter because hackers/spammers want to know how it works. " PR guy: "say no more. I understand. I'll make sure to let the public know it was an accident"
ShawnJG 15y ago
both of you make excellent points, and either could be true. But the sad fact is, we've had so many examples of government and big corporations behaving so badly that distrust has become systemic in our society. If Yahoo's actions were intentional they were probably unsure of exact amount of protesters but were taking preventative measures. Could have been a tech mistake, possibly. But coupled with the fact that twitter was also actively blocking the same topic, it seems highly suspicious.

eli 15y ago

Yahoo's spam filtering is terrible and I know for a fact that they maintain a list of URLs that are blocked even if they're just mentioned in the body. Occam's Razor (not to mention Hanlon's Razor) suggest the issue is not deliberate.

aidenn0 15y ago
I have a yahoo mail account and I can confirm that their filtering is terrible. About 1 in 500 e-mails or so never make it to either my inbox or spam box, without any error going to the sender.

pbh 15y ago

Nobody seems to have picked up on the "external" spam filter part of the response. My guess is that Y! uses some somewhat dodgy external providers of spam/content filtering. Historically, external providers that block inappropriate sites have considered such lists to be their proprietary information, but when those lists have been revealed, they tend to have a pretty heavy political agenda. Peacefire has some reports that detail this: http://www.peacefire.org/ http://www.peacefire.org/ (So, I think the reason for the Y! block was likely an unaccountable third-party, but I think the Twitter block is pretty odd.)

rsynnott 15y ago
I'd be a little surprised if Yahoo uses third parties for spam filtering. The Twitter thing is no mystery, though; Twitter routinely hides controversial hashtags.

cpeterso 15y ago

Is Yahoo's spam filter really so quick to (automatically!) start filtering a very recent keyword (#occupywallst) based on just "dozens of people"?