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"Facebook’s systems determined that you were going too fast when taking an action. You must significantly slow down. You are engaging in behaviour that may be c

"Facebook’s systems determined that you were going too fast when taking an action. You must significantly slow down. You are engaging in behaviour that may be considered annoying or abusive by other users." So, I, like the author, I have a problem with trying to assess whether to give service to a user based on profiling their use-cadence of the machine (not with limitations meant to manage the service's bandwidth like we have here on HN, mind you). Is there anything we can do to outlaw or at least discourage this practice?

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
> Is there anything we can do to outlaw or at least discourage this practice? You want to outlaw rate-limiting? Rapid-fire actions on social platforms, past a certain threshold, is highly correlated with unwanted behaviors. This is especially true for new user accounts or those previously flagged for other abuse tactics. Even Hacker News does this. Rarely does anything good come from someone firing off as many actions as fast as they possibly can on a social platform. IMO, it's not a problem. I certainly don't want laws dictating that companies can't rate limit users or put limits on how frequently certain actions can be taken. That would be a huge overstep.
- JetAlone 5y ago
  >You want to outlaw rate-limiting? Don't get it twisted. I specifically said I was okay with rate limiting for bandwidth when I said "(not with limitations meant to manage the service's bandwidth like we have here on HN, mind you)". What I do want to outlaw is: "Assess[ing] whether to give service to a user based on profiling their use-cadence of the machine" I want to outlaw investigating a user's input patterns on their hardware to predict their emotional state and use that prediction to curtail service, all minority-report like. Do you feel me?
  - lazide 5y ago
    How exactly does that refute the earlier comment about that being useful and probably necessary to prevent abuse?
    - JetAlone 5y ago
      It emphasizes that my first post already provided an answer to their "zinger" rhetorical question, and attempts to clarify in narrative terms why I would have a problem with the essential nature of this approach to abuse prevention. As far as refuting, well, you can't get an ought from an is. There's a first order principle we'd both disagree on, based around what kind of precedents to set, around what sort of world we want to live in. I no longer ponder a question I once had: "Why are so alarmingly many people on here okay with living in a world full of machines designed to increasingly profile people beyond their control and leave them feeling dehumanized by mechanical overrides?" Because I am quite confident the answer is: "This is 'Hacker' News. We'll write the software - we'll be in more control than the plebs. It will give our institutions power and ultimately benefit us". So what can I do to refute that, other than to say "No, the abuse carried out through these systems will be worse than any abuse prevented by them. It's a horrible, rotten thing to do to people and if we were good, we should accept significant material losses to do activism to prevent it from happening". But, due to prevailing attitudes of our times which I personally find to be quite complacent, I recognize I'm not going to be able to simply shake people awake about it. So be it, let my generation make its bed and lay in it.
      - Lascaille 5y ago
        > I recognize I'm not going to be able to simply shake people awake about it Well, you aren't really concluding anything, you're just self-defining your truths. See, you said: >So what can I do to refute that, other than to say "No, the abuse carried out through these systems will be worse than any abuse prevented by them. You have to actually back that statement up, you can't just declare it. Unless you provide some explanation as to why you believe that, you won't be able to 'shake people awake' with what amounts to empty rhetoric.
        JetAlone 5y ago
        I suspect my prior points in isolation would miraculously become easily-understood and agreeable short-hand if they were oriented to the approved resolutions, but in the name of good faith, I will try to point to what should be pretty clear observations with minimal dispute that together cause me to believe "the abuse carried out through these systems will be worse than any abuse prevented by them": -Problems with transparency on big tech platforms, regularly affecting people's livelihoods. -Problems reaching humans with the authority to help - I don't think we want to use algorithms to stonewall people from getting help based on their emotional profile because it will cause even more distress. -Inevitable false positives causing immense frustration as in the case of this author. There may be some people may have a different cadence, different tics, maybe even some kind of disability that cause them to type differently and trigger these systems more often than others. -Existing algorithmically driven emotion related things like social media rage cycles being extremely bad for people's mental health (discussed on this website daily). -Very finely tuned emotional manipulation and control of the masses by morally corrupt authorities (but the CEOs are so benevolent, they even track our emotions, for our own good! There's never going to be systems designed to abuse people.</s>). My appeal here boils down to: the keyboard is my private device. My emotional state while typing on it is my private matter. No matter how much I may type like a maniac on my keyboard from the comfort of my home, any requests that fail should be due to physical restraints, and not emotional ones that seem apparent to a computer. And there should be legal walls protecting the privacy of my own keyboard and my emotional state from unwanted computer analysis. If my behaviour visible in my output in a community is judged to be abusive by the human moderator's discretion, they have the appropriate tools to kick me, and I am okay with that. And not just mine, who am I? Everyone! You, her, him, that group of children over there who are going to grow up in whatever world we leave behind! And in the particular, I am not okay with what happened to the writer of this article - the technology should serve us if it can, and when in an emotional state like the author was, who would have clearly benefited from having the technology serve him in that moment, and my proposed law would make it so! Internet trolls and bots determined to post abuse will just modulate their cadence and try again. The juice of slowing down someone mean is not worth the squeeze of making this system and subjecting everyone to reminders that their every keystroke is being watched and analyzed. Honestly, feels like we've come a long way, that this is now a controversial take on a major tech forum; and the destination for our continued journey is a very bad place. I doubt this will satisfy you any more than my post before, but what's one more run-around?
  - stickfigure 5y ago
    I'm not even sure I understand what you said, let alone feel you. Good luck coding that into some kind of law, especially one that won't be "twisted" by opportunists.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - JetAlone 5y ago
      If we get control of a country, and it's got laws this sensibly protective of human well-being in relationship to technology and big business, and in 10, 20, 30 years the rest of the world goes by on its trajectory (and we fight off their inevitable efforts to infiltrate or conquer our state), you'd be begging the Jetalonian immigration department for a visa! And we'd have to put you on either a very low chance lottery, or a very long wait list, no matter how many "important person points" you score on some chart! We have too many smart, hard working, beautiful people from all over the world who want to move here! They keep applying in droves, whole communities and families! They love the skyline, the night life, the restaurants, the beautiful natural parks, concerts, temples, churches and mosques! They love the food and the music, the fashion and sports! They love to work hard and play with their friends and the best part is, we don't have any tech CEOs who complain about our laws. They want a big market for profiteering from this sort of demoralizing gobbledyguk? It's just across the border, scenic everywhere else! Yes, over yonder where the skies are grey. Okay, you wanna go there?! See ya, pack up! Goodbye! Au revoir! I hope you enjoy learning foreign tech stacks with built-in depression! The only opportunists would be jealous foreign influencers who hate our happy, healthy people!

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

> Is there anything we can do to outlaw or at least discourage this practice? You want to outlaw rate-limiting? Rapid-fire actions on social platforms, past a certain threshold, is highly correlated with unwanted behaviors. This is especially true for new user accounts or those previously flagged for other abuse tactics. Even Hacker News does this. Rarely does anything good come from someone firing off as many actions as fast as they possibly can on a social platform. IMO, it's not a problem. I certainly don't want laws dictating that companies can't rate limit users or put limits on how frequently certain actions can be taken. That would be a huge overstep.

JetAlone 5y ago
>You want to outlaw rate-limiting? Don't get it twisted. I specifically said I was okay with rate limiting for bandwidth when I said "(not with limitations meant to manage the service's bandwidth like we have here on HN, mind you)". What I do want to outlaw is: "Assess[ing] whether to give service to a user based on profiling their use-cadence of the machine" I want to outlaw investigating a user's input patterns on their hardware to predict their emotional state and use that prediction to curtail service, all minority-report like. Do you feel me?
- lazide 5y ago
  How exactly does that refute the earlier comment about that being useful and probably necessary to prevent abuse?
  - JetAlone 5y ago
    It emphasizes that my first post already provided an answer to their "zinger" rhetorical question, and attempts to clarify in narrative terms why I would have a problem with the essential nature of this approach to abuse prevention. As far as refuting, well, you can't get an ought from an is. There's a first order principle we'd both disagree on, based around what kind of precedents to set, around what sort of world we want to live in. I no longer ponder a question I once had: "Why are so alarmingly many people on here okay with living in a world full of machines designed to increasingly profile people beyond their control and leave them feeling dehumanized by mechanical overrides?" Because I am quite confident the answer is: "This is 'Hacker' News. We'll write the software - we'll be in more control than the plebs. It will give our institutions power and ultimately benefit us". So what can I do to refute that, other than to say "No, the abuse carried out through these systems will be worse than any abuse prevented by them. It's a horrible, rotten thing to do to people and if we were good, we should accept significant material losses to do activism to prevent it from happening". But, due to prevailing attitudes of our times which I personally find to be quite complacent, I recognize I'm not going to be able to simply shake people awake about it. So be it, let my generation make its bed and lay in it.
    - Lascaille 5y ago
      > I recognize I'm not going to be able to simply shake people awake about it Well, you aren't really concluding anything, you're just self-defining your truths. See, you said: >So what can I do to refute that, other than to say "No, the abuse carried out through these systems will be worse than any abuse prevented by them. You have to actually back that statement up, you can't just declare it. Unless you provide some explanation as to why you believe that, you won't be able to 'shake people awake' with what amounts to empty rhetoric.
      - JetAlone 5y ago
        I suspect my prior points in isolation would miraculously become easily-understood and agreeable short-hand if they were oriented to the approved resolutions, but in the name of good faith, I will try to point to what should be pretty clear observations with minimal dispute that together cause me to believe "the abuse carried out through these systems will be worse than any abuse prevented by them": -Problems with transparency on big tech platforms, regularly affecting people's livelihoods. -Problems reaching humans with the authority to help - I don't think we want to use algorithms to stonewall people from getting help based on their emotional profile because it will cause even more distress. -Inevitable false positives causing immense frustration as in the case of this author. There may be some people may have a different cadence, different tics, maybe even some kind of disability that cause them to type differently and trigger these systems more often than others. -Existing algorithmically driven emotion related things like social media rage cycles being extremely bad for people's mental health (discussed on this website daily). -Very finely tuned emotional manipulation and control of the masses by morally corrupt authorities (but the CEOs are so benevolent, they even track our emotions, for our own good! There's never going to be systems designed to abuse people.</s>). My appeal here boils down to: the keyboard is my private device. My emotional state while typing on it is my private matter. No matter how much I may type like a maniac on my keyboard from the comfort of my home, any requests that fail should be due to physical restraints, and not emotional ones that seem apparent to a computer. And there should be legal walls protecting the privacy of my own keyboard and my emotional state from unwanted computer analysis. If my behaviour visible in my output in a community is judged to be abusive by the human moderator's discretion, they have the appropriate tools to kick me, and I am okay with that. And not just mine, who am I? Everyone! You, her, him, that group of children over there who are going to grow up in whatever world we leave behind! And in the particular, I am not okay with what happened to the writer of this article - the technology should serve us if it can, and when in an emotional state like the author was, who would have clearly benefited from having the technology serve him in that moment, and my proposed law would make it so! Internet trolls and bots determined to post abuse will just modulate their cadence and try again. The juice of slowing down someone mean is not worth the squeeze of making this system and subjecting everyone to reminders that their every keystroke is being watched and analyzed. Honestly, feels like we've come a long way, that this is now a controversial take on a major tech forum; and the destination for our continued journey is a very bad place. I doubt this will satisfy you any more than my post before, but what's one more run-around?
- stickfigure 5y ago
  I'm not even sure I understand what you said, let alone feel you. Good luck coding that into some kind of law, especially one that won't be "twisted" by opportunists.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - JetAlone 5y ago
    If we get control of a country, and it's got laws this sensibly protective of human well-being in relationship to technology and big business, and in 10, 20, 30 years the rest of the world goes by on its trajectory (and we fight off their inevitable efforts to infiltrate or conquer our state), you'd be begging the Jetalonian immigration department for a visa! And we'd have to put you on either a very low chance lottery, or a very long wait list, no matter how many "important person points" you score on some chart! We have too many smart, hard working, beautiful people from all over the world who want to move here! They keep applying in droves, whole communities and families! They love the skyline, the night life, the restaurants, the beautiful natural parks, concerts, temples, churches and mosques! They love the food and the music, the fashion and sports! They love to work hard and play with their friends and the best part is, we don't have any tech CEOs who complain about our laws. They want a big market for profiteering from this sort of demoralizing gobbledyguk? It's just across the border, scenic everywhere else! Yes, over yonder where the skies are grey. Okay, you wanna go there?! See ya, pack up! Goodbye! Au revoir! I hope you enjoy learning foreign tech stacks with built-in depression! The only opportunists would be jealous foreign influencers who hate our happy, healthy people!