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I always find it funny when people get up in arms about "verbal abuse" and somehow don't care about the abuse inherent in the situation. Somehow the perpetuatio

I always find it funny when people get up in arms about "verbal abuse" and somehow don't care about the abuse inherent in the situation. Somehow the perpetuation of the abuse is justified by someone having an imperfect response, dear god. But i suppose you view him as an uppity supplicant who offended the king. Therefore he's a jerk and deserves it, according to you? This is not a view of things that actually solves the problem long term. The "jerk" is being far more productive than you, he is far above you. When this happens to you, you write a 'polite' reply and get ignored all the same you probably won't even notice because you're too busy calling people jerks for getting banned by AI.

pdpi 4y ago
Two wrongs don't make a right. Twitter banning him for "Revenge Porn" over a video of Stray is really not a great look, and the ban should've been immediately reversed on appeal. Him being abusive to the moderation team (who likelier than not have nothing to do with the team that built the AI moderation system) is completely uncalled for, though, and deserves punishment Funnily enough, what I think is the right outcome here would come across as incredibly petty: Appeals process is successful, and the ban over literal cat video is reversed; however, there is now a new ban due to abuse of the moderation team, which will have its own appeals process.
- ansible 4y ago
  Agree on your proposed outcome. If you have done any sort of social media moderation, you will very quickly develop an immediate reaction to even a trace of abuse or hostility from the users. There are so, so many assholes on the Internet, and you can't fix them. The more effort you put in to one incident, the more of your time these assholes will take up. The CS rep handling this particular case has dozens of others to handle that same hour. They don't care about you, the user, because you are not a customer, you are the product, and your are easily replaceable. The CS rep's boss also doesn't care about you.
  - Nullabillity 4y ago
    > They don't care about you, the user, because you are not a customer, you are the product, and your are easily replaceable. The CS rep's boss also doesn't care about you. And this right here is the root of the problem. The problem isn't that customers are "abusive", it's that CEOs and stock holders can offload the fruits of their own abuse onto people who are powerless to change anything. It's not exactly a surprise that that breeds resentment from both sides.
- saurik 4y ago
  > Him being abusive to the moderation team His comment was angry, but not "abusive". > (who likelier than not have nothing to do with the team that built the AI moderation system) No: they do not get some free pass here from the moral implications of this system they have chosen to be a part of. I have at lease some sympathy for the idea that some of these people might really really have needed a job or have gotten caught up in a system they didn't realize was evil until it is too late... but, now they work for the system and the power differential is clearly skewed in their direction with them being the judicial arm of this ridiculously broken enforcement mechanism created by Twitter: they have power over this user that this user will never have over them, and so the onus of being reasonable is entirely on them. > is completely uncalled for, though No: it was quite directly "called for". Twitter did something ridiculous here, and they frankly at this point are doing it knowingly, and the people who work for Twitter are actively deciding to be part of Twitter's process. If you go around as a bully kicking people in the shin because "no one said I can't" even though you know you are being a complete jerk about it, and then one of the people you kick has the gall to get angry, that anger should be expected and I'd even go so far to say it is justified. > and deserves punishment Even if this were true--and it is not--we should then be faced with the reality that that is a separate issue; and so, if Twitter, wanted to be honest here they should accept the appeal and then separately reinstate the user's account. However, remember: if we believe that being angry at someone who wronged you is somehow wrong (which again: it is not) and we believe (due to your insistence) that this potential customer service agent (we don't actually have proof there was a person who looked at the appeal) was horribly wronged by the user (even though they weren't), then the action of punishing the user by lying about the result of their appeal for sending a slightly-frustrated response is yet another situation where we should claim that the person wronged should turn the other cheek, no? So your own logic actually also comes to the conclusion this customer support person should be punished... I might personally suggest--for the sake of irony--being immediately fired and then judging their amount of severance pay based on how friendly they are to the HR representative (who, obviously, despite being the arm of this decision will be cleared of culpability due to having merely chosen to be part of a labyrinthine bureaucracy instead of directly taking the action) after they are given the news. Look: I used to actively do customer service. And did I get some people who were angry? Yup. Did it sometimes piss me off? Of course! Hell: I will even admit to occasionally getting into arguments with users that scaled on how annoying they were being. But, at the end of the day, I didn't let that decide whether I was going to give someone the refund they asked for or to fix their account in whatever way was needed. It might have limited the "extra" friendly help or random benefits I sometimes threw people I would directly interact with, but if they were legitimately wronged they deserved legitimate compensation and their anger at me had to be contextualized by its cause: that my software had wronged them. If anything, it felt a bit good to just hit the refund button and then ignore them forever.
cgriswald 4y ago
You seem really hung up on only one side being right or wrong. He was in the right. He then did something wrong. That doesn't justify what Twitter did, but it doesn't ingratiate me to his side either. Yes, I generally treat people with politeness and consider it a mistake when I let my emotions get the better of me. Perhaps not surprisingly, I've usually only had good experiences with most businesses when there have been mistakes, even mistakes I felt were egregious and should not have happened. That's not always the case, but in those cases that's the last business they usually get from me. When I say this guy is a supplicant, it's because he has no leverage to get what he wants. It's obvious Twitter doesn't care about him. The other stories in these threads make it obvious they don't care about most of their users or at least about fairness. That's what he's subjected himself to and this result shouldn't really be a surprise. I use HN and it's free to me. I could get banned.. I'd have some questions about my ban; but I also know dang to be pretty damn fair. I respect him and I think he respects others. There's no scenario where I'd talk to dang like this guy talked to Twitter. If dang acted like Twitter, I would either not be here, or I wouldn't be at all surprised when I was treated like I didn't matter.

pdpi 4y ago

Two wrongs don't make a right. Twitter banning him for "Revenge Porn" over a video of Stray is really not a great look, and the ban should've been immediately reversed on appeal. Him being abusive to the moderation team (who likelier than not have nothing to do with the team that built the AI moderation system) is completely uncalled for, though, and deserves punishment Funnily enough, what I think is the right outcome here would come across as incredibly petty: Appeals process is successful, and the ban over literal cat video is reversed; however, there is now a new ban due to abuse of the moderation team, which will have its own appeals process.

ansible 4y ago
Agree on your proposed outcome. If you have done any sort of social media moderation, you will very quickly develop an immediate reaction to even a trace of abuse or hostility from the users. There are so, so many assholes on the Internet, and you can't fix them. The more effort you put in to one incident, the more of your time these assholes will take up. The CS rep handling this particular case has dozens of others to handle that same hour. They don't care about you, the user, because you are not a customer, you are the product, and your are easily replaceable. The CS rep's boss also doesn't care about you.
- Nullabillity 4y ago
  > They don't care about you, the user, because you are not a customer, you are the product, and your are easily replaceable. The CS rep's boss also doesn't care about you. And this right here is the root of the problem. The problem isn't that customers are "abusive", it's that CEOs and stock holders can offload the fruits of their own abuse onto people who are powerless to change anything. It's not exactly a surprise that that breeds resentment from both sides.
saurik 4y ago
> Him being abusive to the moderation team His comment was angry, but not "abusive". > (who likelier than not have nothing to do with the team that built the AI moderation system) No: they do not get some free pass here from the moral implications of this system they have chosen to be a part of. I have at lease some sympathy for the idea that some of these people might really really have needed a job or have gotten caught up in a system they didn't realize was evil until it is too late... but, now they work for the system and the power differential is clearly skewed in their direction with them being the judicial arm of this ridiculously broken enforcement mechanism created by Twitter: they have power over this user that this user will never have over them, and so the onus of being reasonable is entirely on them. > is completely uncalled for, though No: it was quite directly "called for". Twitter did something ridiculous here, and they frankly at this point are doing it knowingly, and the people who work for Twitter are actively deciding to be part of Twitter's process. If you go around as a bully kicking people in the shin because "no one said I can't" even though you know you are being a complete jerk about it, and then one of the people you kick has the gall to get angry, that anger should be expected and I'd even go so far to say it is justified. > and deserves punishment Even if this were true--and it is not--we should then be faced with the reality that that is a separate issue; and so, if Twitter, wanted to be honest here they should accept the appeal and then separately reinstate the user's account. However, remember: if we believe that being angry at someone who wronged you is somehow wrong (which again: it is not) and we believe (due to your insistence) that this potential customer service agent (we don't actually have proof there was a person who looked at the appeal) was horribly wronged by the user (even though they weren't), then the action of punishing the user by lying about the result of their appeal for sending a slightly-frustrated response is yet another situation where we should claim that the person wronged should turn the other cheek, no? So your own logic actually also comes to the conclusion this customer support person should be punished... I might personally suggest--for the sake of irony--being immediately fired and then judging their amount of severance pay based on how friendly they are to the HR representative (who, obviously, despite being the arm of this decision will be cleared of culpability due to having merely chosen to be part of a labyrinthine bureaucracy instead of directly taking the action) after they are given the news. Look: I used to actively do customer service. And did I get some people who were angry? Yup. Did it sometimes piss me off? Of course! Hell: I will even admit to occasionally getting into arguments with users that scaled on how annoying they were being. But, at the end of the day, I didn't let that decide whether I was going to give someone the refund they asked for or to fix their account in whatever way was needed. It might have limited the "extra" friendly help or random benefits I sometimes threw people I would directly interact with, but if they were legitimately wronged they deserved legitimate compensation and their anger at me had to be contextualized by its cause: that my software had wronged them. If anything, it felt a bit good to just hit the refund button and then ignore them forever.

cgriswald 4y ago

You seem really hung up on only one side being right or wrong. He was in the right. He then did something wrong. That doesn't justify what Twitter did, but it doesn't ingratiate me to his side either. Yes, I generally treat people with politeness and consider it a mistake when I let my emotions get the better of me. Perhaps not surprisingly, I've usually only had good experiences with most businesses when there have been mistakes, even mistakes I felt were egregious and should not have happened. That's not always the case, but in those cases that's the last business they usually get from me. When I say this guy is a supplicant, it's because he has no leverage to get what he wants. It's obvious Twitter doesn't care about him. The other stories in these threads make it obvious they don't care about most of their users or at least about fairness. That's what he's subjected himself to and this result shouldn't really be a surprise. I use HN and it's free to me. I could get banned.. I'd have some questions about my ban; but I also know dang to be pretty damn fair. I respect him and I think he respects others. There's no scenario where I'd talk to dang like this guy talked to Twitter. If dang acted like Twitter, I would either not be here, or I wouldn't be at all surprised when I was treated like I didn't matter.