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> For example if spammers find out which sites are banned then they just post other ones. I don't think that makes sense. The supposed spammers can just try lo

> For example if spammers find out which sites are banned then they just post other ones. I don't think that makes sense. The supposed spammers can just try looking up whether their submissions show up or not when not logged in.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
That also requires additional effort on the spammers’ part. Increasing cost of attacks is an effective defense strategy.
- rhaksw 3y ago
  Increasing cost of attacks is effective against good faith people, not spammers. Even Cory Doctorow made this case in "Como is Infosec" [1]. The only problem with Cory's argument is, he points people to the SC Principles [2]. The SCP contain exceptions for not notifying about "spam, phishing or malware." But anything can be considered spam, and transparency-with-exceptions has always been platforms' position. They've always argued they can secretly remove content when it amounts to "spam." Nobody has challenged them on that point. The reality is, platforms that use secretive moderation lend themselves to spammers. [1] https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563 https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563 [2] https://santaclaraprinciples.org/ https://santaclaraprinciples.org/
  - em-bee 3y ago
    platforms that use secretive moderation lend themselves to spammers how is that? i can understand it not being useful, but how would it help spammers?
    - rhaksw 3y ago
      Spammers game the system while good-faith users get edged out. Spammers are determined actors who perceive threats everywhere, whereas good-faith users never imagine that a platform would secretly remove their content. Today, you see low quality content on social media, not because the world is dumb, but because the people who get their message out know the secret tricks. Secret suppression is extremely common [1]. Many of today's content moderators say exceptions for shadowbans are needed [2]. They think lying to users promotes reality. That's bologna. [1] https://www.removednews.com/p/hate-online-censorship-its-way-worse https://www.removednews.com/p/hate-online-censorship-its-way... [2] https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1689887293002379264 https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1689887293002379264
      - em-bee 3y ago
        so to spammers shadowbanning makes no difference, but good-faith users somehow get discouraged even if they don't know they are shadowbanned just because they get no reaction to their posts? how is an explicit ban any less discouraging? i can't see how shadowbanning makes things worse for good-faith users. and evidently it does work against spammers here on HN (though we don't know if it is the shadow or the banning that makes it effective, but i'll believe dang when he says that it does help)
        rhaksw 3y ago
        > how is an explicit ban any less discouraging? It's about whose messages are sidelined, not who gets discouraged. With shadow removals, good-faith users' content is elbowed out without their knowledge. Since they don't know about it, they don't adjust behavior and do not bring their comments elsewhere. Over 50% of Reddit users have removed content they don't know about. Just look at what people say when they find out [1]. > and evidently it does work against spammers here on HN It doesn't. It benefits people who know how to work the system. The more secret it is, the more special knowledge you need. [1] https://www.reveddit.com/#say https://www.reveddit.com/#say
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    In my experience, increasing cost or delay even a little bit cuts out a disproportionate amount of bad stuff. I once had the domain 'moronsinahurry' registered, though not with this group in mind...
    - rhaksw 3y ago
      In your experience where? No research has been done about whether shadow moderation is good or bad for discourse. It was simply adopted by the entire internet because it's perceived as "easier." Indeed, for platforms and advertisers, it certainly is an easier way to control messaging. It fools good-faith users all the time. I've shared examples of that elsewhere in this thread.
      - DamonHD 3y ago
        I think that you are reading this too narrowly. SPAMers etc are often in a hurry. For example, simply avoiding responding for a second or two to an inbound SMTP connection drops a whole group of bad email attempts on the floor while no one else even notices.[0] Another example: manually delaying admitting new users to a forum (and in the process checking for bad activity from their IP/email etc) seems to shed another bunch of unwanteds, and raising the cost a little with some simple questions on the way in, also. This point about small extra delay and effort deterring disproportionately bad behaviour is quite broad. [0] https://deer-run.com/users/hal/sysadmin/greet_pause.html https://deer-run.com/users/hal/sysadmin/greet_pause.html
        rhaksw 3y ago
        In your cost/benefit analysis, you overlook the harms created by secretive actions. That's why I asked for details about your experience. The internet has run on secrets for 40 years. That doesn't make it right. Now that everyone and their mother is online, it's time to consider the harms that secrets create.
        DamonHD 3y ago
        There are bad actors, and many of them are lazy/stupid. Their activity imposes a tax / harms on the rest of us. One way to minimise that harm to the good actors includes some mildly covert measures. The sendmail GreetPause is hardly a secret for example: it catches a common deliberate malicious protocol violation and is publicly documented. This is not unique to the Internet nor new; see also banking and personal security and so on.
rhaksw 3y ago
You're correct again. Spammers and bots are the most determined actors, so these secretive measures don't impact them. In fact, such secrecy benefits spammers. Good-faith users never imagine that platforms would secretly action content. So when you look at overall trends, bots, spammers and trolls are winning while genuine users are being pushed aside. I argued that secrecy benefits trolls in a blog post, but I don't want to spam links to my posts in the comments.
- speedgoose 3y ago
  Most spammers aren’t that competent. Hiding their posts without telling them used to be very effective on Reddit (now Reddit tells them). I guess it’s the same on HN.
  - rhaksw 3y ago
    Spammers are more competent than genuine users. They are advertisers, so they are more likely to be tracking metrics.
- dang 3y ago
  If that were right, then HN would be overrun by spam.
  - rhaksw 3y ago
    So you think secretive measures more often defeat spammers than trusting users? I'd argue HN's content could be a lot better than it currently is. Content curation is necessary, but shadow moderation is not helping. When a forum removes visible consequences, it does not prepare its users to learn from their mistakes. I'll admit, I find HN to be more transparently moderated than Reddit and Twitter, but let's not pretend people have stopped trying to game the system. The more secret the rules (and how they are applied), the more a system serves a handful of people who have learned the secret tricks. Meanwhile, regular users who are not platform experts trust these systems to be transparent. Trustful users spend more time innovating elsewhere, and they are all disrupted by unexpected secretive tricks.
raverbashing 3y ago
It has made sense since the internet was invented, spammers need everything thrown at them because they will abuse every nook and cranny of your system to get paid 1 cent more

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago

That also requires additional effort on the spammers’ part. Increasing cost of attacks is an effective defense strategy.

rhaksw 3y ago
Increasing cost of attacks is effective against good faith people, not spammers. Even Cory Doctorow made this case in "Como is Infosec" [1]. The only problem with Cory's argument is, he points people to the SC Principles [2]. The SCP contain exceptions for not notifying about "spam, phishing or malware." But anything can be considered spam, and transparency-with-exceptions has always been platforms' position. They've always argued they can secretly remove content when it amounts to "spam." Nobody has challenged them on that point. The reality is, platforms that use secretive moderation lend themselves to spammers. [1] https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563 https://doctorow.medium.com/como-is-infosec-307f87004563 [2] https://santaclaraprinciples.org/ https://santaclaraprinciples.org/
- em-bee 3y ago
  platforms that use secretive moderation lend themselves to spammers how is that? i can understand it not being useful, but how would it help spammers?
  - rhaksw 3y ago
    Spammers game the system while good-faith users get edged out. Spammers are determined actors who perceive threats everywhere, whereas good-faith users never imagine that a platform would secretly remove their content. Today, you see low quality content on social media, not because the world is dumb, but because the people who get their message out know the secret tricks. Secret suppression is extremely common [1]. Many of today's content moderators say exceptions for shadowbans are needed [2]. They think lying to users promotes reality. That's bologna. [1] https://www.removednews.com/p/hate-online-censorship-its-way-worse https://www.removednews.com/p/hate-online-censorship-its-way... [2] https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1689887293002379264 https://twitter.com/rhaksw/status/1689887293002379264
    - em-bee 3y ago
      so to spammers shadowbanning makes no difference, but good-faith users somehow get discouraged even if they don't know they are shadowbanned just because they get no reaction to their posts? how is an explicit ban any less discouraging? i can't see how shadowbanning makes things worse for good-faith users. and evidently it does work against spammers here on HN (though we don't know if it is the shadow or the banning that makes it effective, but i'll believe dang when he says that it does help)
      - rhaksw 3y ago
        > how is an explicit ban any less discouraging? It's about whose messages are sidelined, not who gets discouraged. With shadow removals, good-faith users' content is elbowed out without their knowledge. Since they don't know about it, they don't adjust behavior and do not bring their comments elsewhere. Over 50% of Reddit users have removed content they don't know about. Just look at what people say when they find out [1]. > and evidently it does work against spammers here on HN It doesn't. It benefits people who know how to work the system. The more secret it is, the more special knowledge you need. [1] https://www.reveddit.com/#say https://www.reveddit.com/#say
- DamonHD 3y ago
  In my experience, increasing cost or delay even a little bit cuts out a disproportionate amount of bad stuff. I once had the domain 'moronsinahurry' registered, though not with this group in mind...
  - rhaksw 3y ago
    In your experience where? No research has been done about whether shadow moderation is good or bad for discourse. It was simply adopted by the entire internet because it's perceived as "easier." Indeed, for platforms and advertisers, it certainly is an easier way to control messaging. It fools good-faith users all the time. I've shared examples of that elsewhere in this thread.
    - DamonHD 3y ago
      I think that you are reading this too narrowly. SPAMers etc are often in a hurry. For example, simply avoiding responding for a second or two to an inbound SMTP connection drops a whole group of bad email attempts on the floor while no one else even notices.[0] Another example: manually delaying admitting new users to a forum (and in the process checking for bad activity from their IP/email etc) seems to shed another bunch of unwanteds, and raising the cost a little with some simple questions on the way in, also. This point about small extra delay and effort deterring disproportionately bad behaviour is quite broad. [0] https://deer-run.com/users/hal/sysadmin/greet_pause.html https://deer-run.com/users/hal/sysadmin/greet_pause.html
      - rhaksw 3y ago
        In your cost/benefit analysis, you overlook the harms created by secretive actions. That's why I asked for details about your experience. The internet has run on secrets for 40 years. That doesn't make it right. Now that everyone and their mother is online, it's time to consider the harms that secrets create.
        DamonHD 3y ago
        There are bad actors, and many of them are lazy/stupid. Their activity imposes a tax / harms on the rest of us. One way to minimise that harm to the good actors includes some mildly covert measures. The sendmail GreetPause is hardly a secret for example: it catches a common deliberate malicious protocol violation and is publicly documented. This is not unique to the Internet nor new; see also banking and personal security and so on.

rhaksw 3y ago

You're correct again. Spammers and bots are the most determined actors, so these secretive measures don't impact them. In fact, such secrecy benefits spammers. Good-faith users never imagine that platforms would secretly action content. So when you look at overall trends, bots, spammers and trolls are winning while genuine users are being pushed aside. I argued that secrecy benefits trolls in a blog post, but I don't want to spam links to my posts in the comments.

speedgoose 3y ago
Most spammers aren’t that competent. Hiding their posts without telling them used to be very effective on Reddit (now Reddit tells them). I guess it’s the same on HN.
- rhaksw 3y ago
  Spammers are more competent than genuine users. They are advertisers, so they are more likely to be tracking metrics.
dang 3y ago
If that were right, then HN would be overrun by spam.
- rhaksw 3y ago
  So you think secretive measures more often defeat spammers than trusting users? I'd argue HN's content could be a lot better than it currently is. Content curation is necessary, but shadow moderation is not helping. When a forum removes visible consequences, it does not prepare its users to learn from their mistakes. I'll admit, I find HN to be more transparently moderated than Reddit and Twitter, but let's not pretend people have stopped trying to game the system. The more secret the rules (and how they are applied), the more a system serves a handful of people who have learned the secret tricks. Meanwhile, regular users who are not platform experts trust these systems to be transparent. Trustful users spend more time innovating elsewhere, and they are all disrupted by unexpected secretive tricks.

raverbashing 3y ago

It has made sense since the internet was invented, spammers need everything thrown at them because they will abuse every nook and cranny of your system to get paid 1 cent more