3 ms·

Hanlon's Razor is, I believe, a good rule of thumb, but people keep using it in situations such as this one where it's not just potentially malice (wanting to h

Hanlon's Razor is, I believe, a good rule of thumb, but people keep using it in situations such as this one where it's not just potentially malice (wanting to harm someone for little other reason than wanting to see them hurt or wanting to hurt) but also greed/self-interest. Hanlon's Razor as stated makes sense to me. I see a lot more stupidity in the world than I see people wanting to hurt for no other reason. But greed? I see a lot of that.

daenz 4y ago
Yeah, I think Hanlon's Razor was intended to apply to individuals, not organizations. Often the "stupidity" of an organization is a shield for malice or greed.
- tehlike 4y ago
  Organizations are made up of people. When you have 5000 people making small decisions with 0.1% possibility of being wrong, if have 40% of chance having at least one mistake over 5000 decisions.
  - daenz 4y ago
    People are not independent coin tosses. They coordinate, manage, overrule, scheme, discuss, and process information in strategic ways that render these kinds of extremely simplified models impossible.
    - tehlike 4y ago
      They don't work on every single decision collectively.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
tehlike 4y ago
This issue is such a small thing that it is much more likely to be an unintended issue than otherwise.
eberkund 4y ago
Why do you think a bug is a "simpler" explanation for this behaviour? Maybe if all links were broken then sure, but if only specific sites that operate against the interests of Twitter stop working doesn't that point to something else going on?
- tehlike 4y ago
  An algorithm may have incorrectly marked a site as malicious, or crawling might be failing because of an malformed http header etc. Who knows... When there is feedback loops involved (in the context of an integrity system, for example), it doesn't outright block everything. In the past work i had our systems blocked some publishers traffic wrongfully, while not blocking others when it should(i was in display ads).
- coryrc 4y ago
  Because Mastodon is not actually a threat.

daenz 4y ago

Yeah, I think Hanlon's Razor was intended to apply to individuals, not organizations. Often the "stupidity" of an organization is a shield for malice or greed.

tehlike 4y ago
Organizations are made up of people. When you have 5000 people making small decisions with 0.1% possibility of being wrong, if have 40% of chance having at least one mistake over 5000 decisions.
- daenz 4y ago
  People are not independent coin tosses. They coordinate, manage, overrule, scheme, discuss, and process information in strategic ways that render these kinds of extremely simplified models impossible.
  - tehlike 4y ago
    They don't work on every single decision collectively.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

tehlike 4y ago

This issue is such a small thing that it is much more likely to be an unintended issue than otherwise.

eberkund 4y ago

Why do you think a bug is a "simpler" explanation for this behaviour? Maybe if all links were broken then sure, but if only specific sites that operate against the interests of Twitter stop working doesn't that point to something else going on?

tehlike 4y ago
An algorithm may have incorrectly marked a site as malicious, or crawling might be failing because of an malformed http header etc. Who knows... When there is feedback loops involved (in the context of an integrity system, for example), it doesn't outright block everything. In the past work i had our systems blocked some publishers traffic wrongfully, while not blocking others when it should(i was in display ads).
coryrc 4y ago
Because Mastodon is not actually a threat.